silverado goldmines (867737)
By Laura Sandiford
The Choctaw Plaindealer
Applying for a Capital Access Program (CAP) Loan will serve as the first major step taken by
Choctaw County Supervisors to move forward with the agreement between the County and
Silverado Green Fuel.
After signing a memorandum-of-understanding in late December, the Board of Supervisors
approved a motion to apply for a CAP Loan from the state that is not to exceed $1 Million.
Silverado Green Fuel will repay the CAP Loan, an Alaskan based company, which will locate
and operate a low rank coal-water fuel (LRCWF) demonstration commercial plant on
approximately 14 acres in Choctaw County at the Red Hills Eco Plex.
In the agreement the County is responsible for building the outer shell of the facility and
Silverado will provide the base foundation for the structure. The shell of the building may not
require the total $1 million, and the county will only request the amount it needs from the
state once it is approved. As part of the agreement, Silverado Green Fuel will hire at least 45
employees and give precedence to Choctaw County applicants.
Silverado will create a demonstration facility with the objective of turning coal, mined by Red
Hills Mine, into a stable liquid fuel. The LRCWF created through the process is said to be the
answer to America's energy and oil crisis.
According to Garry L. Anselmo, President of Silverado Green Fuels, developing a useable
alternative fuel product will lead to less dependence on crude oil.
The project entails expenditures of $26 million over a period of three years with Silverado
Green Fuel Inc. (SGF) investing an initial $13.1 million in machinery and equipment upon
completion of a facility.
The construction phase of the project is scheduled to take 24 months once it begins. The
board approved the application process during a meeting on Monday, July 2. They anticipate
approval of the CAP Loan in approximately 60 days and will then move forward with building
the structure.
The Company will make its first monthly lease payment to the county within 15 days of
completing the CAP loan project, meaning that the County will not have to invest local funds
into repaying the loan. Once the CAP loan debt service is satisfied, the County agrees to sell
the facility to SGF for no more than $100 if the company wishes to purchase the facility.
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Die Chance war absolut da für eine Trendwende!
heute zweites Verkaufssignal also doppelte bestätigung, mal schauen was in 9 Wochen wird und vorallem von welchem Tiefpunkt aus wir mal wieder anfangen zu steigen!
5cent,4cent oder 3cent... also tiefer kann es doch echt nicht gehen!
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Angehängte Grafik:
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Angehängte Grafik:
chart.png (verkleinert auf 49%)
chart.png (verkleinert auf 49%)
das tut richtig weh..............................
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Mit Burns hast Du recht, das ist aber keine Person sondern das ist der DruckerHersteller von Silv.
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Ob da endlich die Trendwende kommt??? kann man bezweifeln der Kurs wird jetzt richtig in die Knie gehen!
WIE KANN MAN SEINE AKTIEN ERNEUT VERMEHREN WENN DER KURS SO BESCHI... IST?
bin mir sicher das es noch nicht viele mitbekommen haben, das wird aber bald passieren...
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chart_p&f.png
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Angehängte Grafik:
chart.png (verkleinert auf 82%)
chart.png (verkleinert auf 82%)
bei 672mill.St. zu 0,087$, müßte doch der Kurs nun bei 716mill.St. 0,082$ die Vermehrung schon verdaut haben!
Eigentlich, aber die letzte Vermehrung führte zu 50% Kursverlust... mh...
ps.Aktien können steigen und fallen
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Moinmoin,
Was mich dem Garry sein Laden an Nerven (leider nicht nur) kostet geht doch auf keine Kuhhaut.
Vor meinem Urlaub vor 2 Wochen schienen mir die 0,09 $ ein stabiler Grund. Jetzt zittern wir wieder ob die 0,08 $ halten.
Da hilft nur jeden Tag beten für die fleißigen Goldsucher.
In den Norden geht die Reise heute definitiv nicht. :-(
Mal sehen wie lange die Investierten locker bleiben.
Wenn Garry kein Abzocker ist, war die Aktienvermehrung einfach nötig um den Kahn am Laufen zu halten. Irgendwie muß das Schiff ja auch noch unterhalten werden.
Die Sicheren Häfen Goldader und Demoanlage sind noch nicht in Sicht.
Aber irgendwann ...
Wobei mich langsam Zweifel überkommen, ob die Anlage Realität wird. Die Zeit läuft Garry davon. Wenn es in Mississipi nichts wird gehen Garry und sein Dr. in Rente.
Bis dahin hoffe und bete ich.
Is this a false alarm?
by Gail E. Tverberg
RELATED NEWS:
Crisis, what energy crisis?...
Peak Oil - July 22...
Mini review: A Crude Awakening: The Oil Crash...
Hubbert on the Nature of Growth...
Resource Forecasting for the Geologically Challenged...
This is Chapter 2 of a booklet I am writing with assistance from folks at TheOilDrum.com.
As we look at the answers to these questions, we will see that the production decline discussed in Chapter 1: What Is Peak Oil? appears to be nearly immediate. Available methods for offsetting this decline appear to be too little, too late. This time the alarm is real.
1. It seems like people thought we were running out of oil in the 1970s, and then all of our problems went away. Why is the situation different now?
Let's look again at the graph of oil production for the US-48 states, Alaska, and the North Sea:
Oil Production, US- 48, Alaska, North Sea
When US oil production began decreasing about 1970, there were still several sources of oil that could be ramped up:
• Saudi oil production could be increased, in a very short time frame.
• Alaskan production could be ramped up, once the pipeline was finished
• North Sea production could be started
Now we have reached the point where both Alaskan and North Sea production are declining. Saudi production also is declining, and there is suspicion that this is for geological reasons as well.
Discoveries in recent years have been mostly small fields or have been in places where oil is very difficult to obtain. In either of these situations, huge expense is required for very modest payback. We are running out of reasonable places to drill more wells.
2. What is the situation with current world oil production? Are major oil-producing regions having problems with production?
Six out of seven of the major oil producing areas are either reporting declining production, or have reported problems that are expected to lead to declining production in the near future. These six areas account for nearly half of world oil production. There are many other smaller areas with declining production as well. Thus, it appears that peak oil is very near at hand, and that large production increases from new sources will be needed in the next one to four years to prevent peak oil.
Based on data of the US Energy Information Administration, the largest oil producing countries / areas in 2006 were
• Russia - Increasing production, but future problems expected (9,247,000 barrels per day)
• Saudi Arabia - Declining production (9,152,000)
• United States - Long-term declining production (5,136,000)
• Iran - Declining production (4,028,000)
• China - Slight increase in production (3,686,000)
• Mexico - Largest oil field peaked in 2006 (3,256,000)
• North Sea (Norway, Great Britain) - Declining production (4,343,000)
Saudi Arabia used to be the world's largest oil producer, but its production has been declining since late 2005, so it is now second to Russia. Its production decline is supposedly voluntary, but analyses such as this one and this one suggest that there is a geological basis to its decline.
Russia is now the world's largest oil producer. The fact that its production has been increasing is one of the reasons we are not yet in deep decline. Russia's Alfa Bank is now warning that "production stagnation is unavoidable" reflecting "a higher proportion of water in the declining output", so it appears that this source of increase will be disappearing soon.
Mexico's production is now declining because of the decline in its largest field, Cantarell. The one country not included as having production problems is China. Even this classification is borderline. Oil production in China for the first three months of 2007 increased by only 0.3% over the corresponding period a year ago--hardly enough to matter.
With six of the seven major oil-producing areas having production issues of one type or another, a huge amount of oil from new sources is needed very quickly if worldwide production is to continue to increase. This oil is needed in a short time-frame -- the next one to four years. Production later will help mitigate the decline in production but is unlikely to prevent peak oil.
3. If we really want more oil, can't we just increase production in the areas where we have been drilling? I've heard that there is still quite a bit of oil left in the ground when we finish drilling.
Yes, there is still quite a of bit oil left in the ground - generally at least 50%, and sometimes as much as 90%, of the oil originally in place. But wanting to get more oil out doesn't seem to have a big impact. This is a graph from a report prepared for the US Department of Energy by Robert Hirsch, Roger Bezdek, and Robert Wendling in 2005. It shows that US energy oil production in the lower 48 states continued to decline between 1970 and 2004, regardless of external events.
First Hirsch graph
4. Won't higher prices result in greater production?
This is another graph from the report mentioned above by Hirsch, Bezdek, and Wendling.
Second Hirsch graph
This graph seems to indicate that for US-48, price changes have had very little impact on oil production.
Also, if we look at world oil production in Chapter 1, Figure 3, we see that volumes have been approximately flat over the past two years, even though prices have been in the $60 to $75 per barrel range - very high by historical standards. With these high prices, OPEC has not offered to raise production and, in fact, reduced production targets effective November 2006.
5. Won't better technology solve our problems?
Given where we are today, it seems unlikely that technology will prevent peak oil. It may help mitigate the down-slope after peak. Some considerations in saying this:
• Technological changes seem to have had relatively little impact on US 48 states production, as shown in the graph in Q4 above.
• Liquid fuel substitutes for oil all have challenges of their own. All are expensive using today's technologies and are expected to be slow to scale up. Biofuels tend to be very land intensive; coal to liquid has serious climate change issues.
• Technological advances are having some benefit (for example, deepwater drilling), and this is reflected in the numbers we are seeing. We need much, much more, however.
• If a major technological advance is made, such as inventing a way to extract significantly more of the oil that has been left behind, it will almost certainly take several years to produce the new equipment to implement the solution widely. Because of the likely timing of peak oil, such a new solution is much more likely to affect the down-slope after peak, than to prevent it. If the technological advance is significant enough, it is possible that it will permit oil production to increase again at some point in the future.
6. How about the Canadian oil sands? I've heard that production may triple by 2020.
While we hear a lot about the oil sands, the amount of oil they produce is not all that large. In 1997, oil sands accounted for 0.8% of world production. By 2005, production had grown to just under 1 million barrels per day, or 1.2% of world production. Even if production tripled, it would still be small compared to what is needed.
One factor impeding growth is the fact that current production methods require large amounts of natural gas, and this is in short supply. One idea under consideration is to build nuclear plants - eight would be required if production were to scale up to 4 million barrels a day. Given the time and expense of building nuclear plants, development is likely to take several years.
7. How about oil shale in the western United States? I have heard that there is a huge amount of this available.
Extraction of oil shale appears to be a very slow and expensive process. The methods under consideration require large amounts of energy plus a lot of water. In the West, the shortage of water is likely to be a major issue, even if the required energy can be obtained by building nuclear power plants, or by some other approach. At this point, no one is able to produce oil from oil shale in commercial quantities. It seems likely that it will take many years before even the level of production of the Canadian oil sands can be achieved.
8. How about the Jack 2 field? Newspaper articles in September 2006 seemed to say it would solve a lot of our problems.
The Jack 2 field is located in a very difficult-to-service location, five miles below the surface of the Gulf of Mexico and 175 miles from the Louisiana coast. It represents, at best, a small contribution to the oil needed to prevent a decline in world production. Newspaper production estimates of 3 billion to 15 billion barrels are for the whole region (rather than just Jack 2) and include natural gas as well as oil. If the estimated 3 to 15 billion barrels is actually oil, rather than mostly natural gas, it corresponds to 5 months to 2 years' oil usage by the US.
It is not yet clear that production will be economically feasible -- more appraisal wells are needed, and new equipment will need to be designed and built to handle oil in such a deep water location. If production is possible, it will almost certainly come too late to prevent peak oil. The cost of oil from such a location will also be extremely high, considering the cost of all the special equipment and the cost of insurance against hurricane damage in such a vulnerable location.
9. How about drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve (ANWR) in Alaska?
According to Wikipedia, the US Department of Interior under Gale Norton estimated that ANWR contained 10.4 billion barrels of oil, and that the maximum production from ANWR would be 1.4 million barrels a day. The US currently uses about 7.5 billion barrels of oil a year, so ANWR represents the equivalent of 17 months oil usage by the United States. The actual production would be spread out over a long period - at least ten years, but not starting until several years after work is begun. Maximum production of 1.4 million barrels would equate to about 7% of current US oil usage (or about 1.4% of world oil production).
Thus ANWR's contribution is likely to be small and come after peak has arrived.
10. How about drilling on the outer continental shelf around the United States? I understand that there is supposed to be quite a lot of oil there.
Based on this article from TheOilDrum.com, the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) seems unlikely to contribute much oil for many years, because of the long lead times required in deep water locations. Special equipment will be needed, which will need to be designed and built. Thus, nearly all production is likely to occur after peak oil arrives.
The amount of oil available on the OCS is very uncertain. The current estimated amount of 115 billion barrels is the equivalent of about 15 years of US oil usage, or a little less than 4 years of world oil usage. It is not clear how much of this can be economically produced - production is expected to be very expensive. In some areas, ice cover for part of the year is expected to be a problem.
11. Aren't there quite a number of countries whose production is declining, simply because they are not investing in sufficient infrastructure and don't have modern techniques - for example, Iraq, Iran, Venezuela, and Mexico. If the US could help these countries with our techniques, wouldn't our oil problems be solved?
This would be great, but it is questionable whether it would work:
• The basic issue of peak oil is the fact that large oil fields that need minimal infrastructure are mostly tapped out. The remaining fields are less desirable for a number of reasons -- they are very small, are located in deep water or near the arctic, or involve very viscous oil or oil mixed with poisonous chemicals.
• In order to tap these remaining fields, a huge amount of infrastructure is needed. This will be very, very expensive.
• One of the major types of infrastructure needed is drilling rigs. Based on a presentation of Matthew Simmons, the supply of these is limited. Also, many of these are very old, and appear to be near the end of their working lives.
• US oil companies are very small in size compared to the National Oil Companies that are having difficulty developing the fields in question. With the lack of rigs, and the huge investment likely to be required, it is doubtful that our oil companies could do much to help these countries with lagging production, if they wanted. Furthermore, the petroleum engineers that would be needed to oversee such operations are also in very short supply.
• It is doubtful whether these countries would welcome our expertise. As a major purchaser of oil, it would seem to be in our best interest to abide by their preferences.
Links by question:
Q2-1: "International Petroleum Monthly-Oil Production" from US Energy Information Agency
www.eia.doe.gov/ipm/supply.html
Q2-2: "Nosedive Toward the Desert" by Stuart Staniford
www.theoildrum.com/node/2331
Q2-3: "The Status of North Ghawar" by Stuart Staniford
www.theoildrum.com/node/2441
Q2-4: "Alfa Report Sees Trouble Looming in Oil Sector", Moscow Times, 7/10/2007
www.themoscowtimes.com/stories/2007/07/10/042-full.html
Q3: R. Hirsch, R. Bezdek, and R. Wendling, "Peaking of World Oil Production: Impacts, Mitigation, and Risk Management", for US Department of Energy, February 2005.
www.hilltoplancers.org/stories/hirsch0502.pdf
Q6: Nuclear Power for the Oilsands
canada.theoildrum.com/node/2572
Q7: Oil Shale and the Future
www.theoildrum.com/story/2006/7/6/0472/48972
Q8: Jack-2 and the Lower Tertiary of the Deepwater Gulf of Mexico
www.theoildrum.com/story/2006/9/8/11274/83638
Q9: Wikipedia - Arctic Refuge Drilling Controversy
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arctic_Refuge_drilling_controversy
Q10: Deep Ocean Energy Resources-A Critical Analysis by Dave Cohen
www.theoildrum.com/story/2006/7/12/101236/478#more
Q11-1: The Peaking of OffShore Oil and Gas by Matthew Simmons
www.simmonsco-intl.com/files/...20Conference%20April%2030,%202007.pdf
Q11-2: "Labour and Skills Crisis Could Stall Oil and Gas Boom" by Booz, Allen & Hamilton
www.boozallen.com/media/file/Labour_and_Skills_Crisis.pdf
Link to a PDF of this chapter
Is This a False Alarm?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Editorial Notes ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This version incorporates all the feedback from readers at The Oil Drum, where an early version was posted.
This chapter is also posted on Gail's personal blog.
Contributor Gail Tverberg writes:
The material in Chapter 2 is entirely new, which was not the case for Chapter 1. I have had people write to me specifically about how to counter common misconceptions (including someone on the investment committee of a large insurer) and Chapter 2 was my answer to their request.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Original article available here.
§
July 30, 2007
U.S. National Petroleum Council: A Coal-To-Liquids Assessment
The following excerpt concerning the outlook for coal-to-liquids production in the United States is taken from the draft version of Facing the Hard Truths about Energy: A comprehensive view to 2030 of global oil and natural gas. Published by the National Petroleum Council, the draft report can be downloaded from the NPC website.
In addition to direct combustion to produce heat and power, coal can be used as a feedstock for producing liquid and gaseous fuels. The Coal-to-Liquids Topic Report presents the issues associated with-and the potential for-coal-to-liquids (CTL) and coal-to-gas (CTG) technologies. CTL and CTG offer an opportunity for the United States to reduce its petroleum imports by producing petroleum products, such as diesel fuel and gasoline, from domestic coal resources. The primary technology reviewed is CTL; most reports have focused on CTL due to the cost and transportation issues associated with CTG. The other important objective included in the Topic Report is viewing and understanding the inputs and assumptions from various publications and the range of production estimates from CTG and CTL technology. A large uncertainty exists for CTL due to various assumptions including petroleum price and technological abilities. The quality of coal and the technological ability of converting the coal varied among the studies. Key assumptions were left unexamined, such as product transportation, labor, equipment availability, and environmental risk.
Overall, the published CTL production estimates are small in the total global petroleum market perspective. Even in the most optimistic scenario from the Southern States Energy Board (SSEB), the volume from CTL amounts to only 20 percent of the U.S. petroleum market. (31) The National Coal Council (NCC) indicated a 10 percent market share (32) whereas various EIA scenarios had 0 to 6 percent of the U.S. market share. (33) The NCC and SSEB both mentioned the added benefit of using the CO2 for enhanced oil recovery (EOR), however the increased oil volumes directly associated with using CO2 from CTL are left unmentioned in those reports. The Topic Report discusses each of these reports in depth.
Even though the production estimates are small relative to the overall petroleum market, the incremental gains from this technology added to gains from other technology areas, such as oil shale, could have a significant effect on U.S. energy cost and import dependency. The use of coal provides the added benefit of relying on a resource that is more plentiful domestically than petroleum. However, this reliance must be carefully balanced with the economics of developing the resource, since CTL facilities can cost more than $1 billion for each 10,000 barrels per day of production. This has implications for the competitiveness of the U.S. economy within the global economy. The primary routes for converting coal to liquid products are called direct and indirect liquefaction. Both technologies were used by Germany to produce fuels before and during World War II (direct liquefaction more extensively).
From the 1970s through the early 1990s, the U.S. Department of Energy conducted research and development related to direct liquefaction. Plans to construct large demonstration plants based on direct coal liquefaction were cancelled during the 1980s, in response to concerns about technical risks, increasing estimates of investment costs, and decreasing world oil prices. Additionally, fuels generated by direct liquefaction are rich in high-octane aromatics, but current clean-fuel specifications in the United States limit the benzene and aromatics content, and the toxicity of gasoline.
In the early 1980s, South Africa's Sasol Company expanded its 1950s production base by building two large indirect coal-liquefaction facilities. Currently, these two Sasol facilities produce a combined total of about 150,000 barrels per day of fuels and chemicals using coal as the primary feedstock.
Dakota Gasification Company's Beulah plant produces about 170 million standard cubic feet per day of substitute natural gas from lignite. In 2000, the plant began exporting carbon dioxide for use in EOR. Currently, about 95 million standard cubic feet per day of CO2 produced at the plant are transported via a 205-mile-long pipeline to EnCana Corporation's Weyburn oil field in southern Saskatchewan. The CO2 is used for enhanced oil recovery, resulting in 5,000 barrels per day of incremental oil production, or an additional 130 to 140 million barrels of oil over the life of the project. The Weyburn field is the subject of a long-term monitoring program to assess the final disposition of the CO2 being injected in this project.
Engineering analyses indicate that co-production or polygeneration plants may offer superior economic and environmental performance, as compared to separate dedicated fuels-only plants. The co-products most often considered in previous projects and studies have been electric power and liquid fuels, usually diesel, produced through a process developed by Fischer and Tropsch.
No commercial scale CTL plant has been sited or permitted in the United States. Given that these plants will have aspects of both a refinery and a power generation facility, it is not clear how quickly this untested permitting process can be expedited, particularly if opponents intervene aggressively. These potential delays have associated financial risks to the first plants.
Unfortunately, at the time of this writing, many large construction projects, including GTL, are experiencing dramatic capital-cost increases from rising material costs, skilledlabor shortages, and contractor backlogs. It is unclear how long this current trend will continue. If these escalations are cyclical, their effect on future CTL growth may be marginal. Otherwise, they may have a pronounced effect on the construction of CTL, especially in the developed world.
The various reports used to predict the production outlook for coal-to-petroleum products differed in production range, and all seemed to be missing discussions on many significant fundamental variables required to develop a sound economic decision. The reports discussed variables such as labor, equipment, product transportation, environmental risk, and feedstock only briefly, if that. Though the reports had significant analyses showing the large untapped resources of coal, practicalities for actually making the coal available-such as labor issues and the price impact of greater demand-should be investigated further before launching a significant coal-to-liquids program.
BY LORETTA TACKETT
STAFF WRITER
Pike County officials say they made a trip to North Dakota last week to prove it's possible to turn coal into liquid fuel in a clean manner, but are still reluctant to say how close the county is to landing such a facility.
Coordinating a media conference call yesterday, County Judge-Executive Wayne T. Rutherford and Energy Technology Director Roger Ford announced they visited the Dakota Gasification Company's Great Plains Synfuels Plant near Buelah, N.D., on Friday. Calling editorials in major newspapers wrong for saying there is no way to have clean coal-to-liquids (CTL) plants, Rutherford said his visit to the one of 44 gasification plants started in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s - in response to the country's first effort at energy independence - proved to him it is possible.
“In terms of our project,” Ford said, “it (the trip) proves that this (carbon sequestration) can be done on a commercial scale.”
There were plants started in Pike County - in the area where Shelby Valley High School now sits - and in Ashland, but when the price of oil dropped, funding was cut for all except the one in North Dakota, which has been processing synthesized natural gas since 1984.
The Coal-to-Liquid Fuel Production Act, cosponsored by Kentucky's R-Jim Bunning, calls for authorizing the Department of Defense to purchase CTL fuels and integrate them into the Strategic Petroleum Reserve for military use. The act has been read twice and is currently in the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, according to the Library of Congress. The CTL Coalition says this will discourage oil exporting countries from manipulating imported oil prices solely to block U.S. development of CTL plants, averting the funding drop in the early ‘80s
The North Dakota plant started testing the process of capturing CO2 in the late ‘90s and started transporting the greenhouse gas via a 200-mile pipeline to the Weyburn Oil Field in Saskatchewan, Canada, the U.S. Department of Energy Reported. The oil company uses the gas to recover more oil from its wells. Prior to carbon capture, the North Dakota plant released the carbon into the air, a process which the Environmental Public Protection Cabinet monitors as it is thought to contributes to global warming.
A CTL plant goes one step further than a gasification plant, Ford said, as once the coal is pressurized to release the natural gas, a CTL plant then uses a catalyst to convert the gas to liquid - which requires water, oxygen and a heat source.
Pike County wouldn't need miles of pipeline to transport its CO2, as it could sell it to those who own the 6,000 gas wells and numerous oil wells in Pike County, Rutherford said.
Pike County, which is already researching the feasibility of and focusing on a site for a CTL plant and an Alternative Energy Park, says it is looking at three sites, Rutherford said, asserting the county is partnering with several companies including Oakridge National Laboratories and Sasol, which runs CTL plants in Africa, and a company interested in opening a plant in Pike. However, he would not comment if it was one of the companies listed in Gov. Ernie Fletcher's letter supporting an urgent need for energy legislation - Rentech, Inc., TECO Coal Corporation, Peabody Energy and EnviRes LC - which Fletcher used to rationalize a special session.
§
Rentech is working with Mingo County Redevelopment Authority for a CTL plant officials say will be near Gilbert, W.Va., and plans to capture the carbon and turn it into glass pellets, as previously reported.
Peabody announced earlier this month it may be partnering with ConocoPhillips in a project to convert coal to synthetic natural gas in western Kentucky, and TECO has mines in Pike County.
The county may have a study done by next spring or summer, Ford said, asserting the county could talk more about a specific site and company then.
Whether the plant would be a CTL or gasification depends on how the legislation ends up, Ford said, calling it “crucial” to Pike's decision on which way to go.
Story created Jul 30, 2007 - 19:08:42 CDT.
Coal threatened by environmentalists, politicians
By Bill Billeter
Register-Herald Reporter
Editor’s note: This story is the second in a two-part series which looks at recent developments in the coal industry, including decisions being made by larger states to curb future development of coal-fired power plants.
For organized environmental organizations, economic considerations take a back seat to reducing the dangers of global warming.
Luke Popovich, a spokesman for the National Mining Association, described it as the effective “efforts by organized environmentalists who don’t want any more coal generation anywhere.”
One of the largest and most influential of these organizations is the Sierra Club, based in California. The Sierra Club has played a key role in defeating plans to build new coal-fired power plants.
Alice McKeown, a coal analyst for the Sierra Club, explained that the organization does not want new coal-fired power plants built until the technology is developed to make them safer for the environment.
In the meantime, the Sierra Club wants to see more diversity in the sources of power generation, with more reliance on clean and renewable energy.
“We are not in favor of shutting down all coal-fired power plants,” McKeown said. “But now is the time to diversify until we have clean coal.”
“Clean coal is possible, but not proven, so we don’t want to build a whole new generation of coal power plants and discover in 10 years that the technology isn’t possible,” McKeown said.
Key states are moving toward reducing carbon emissions created by coal-fired plants. Politicians and environmentalists in California and Texas have blocked the construction of numerous coal-fired plants.
Florida, an important consumer of West Virginia coal, has taken a strong anti-coal stance. Gov. Charlie Crist has signed into law a tough ban on greenhouse emissions, and opposed plans to build or expand coal-fired plants in his state.
Ten states in the Northeast have joined in a regional agreement to cut carbon dioxide emissions, making it unlikely that coal-fired plants will be built in those states.
“It is very difficult to get a permit to build a new coal plant,” said Tom Williams of the policy and engineering efficiency department of Duke Energy, a large utility company that serves 1.6 million customers in the eastern United States.
“Policy makers are frowning on new plants,” Williams said. “We need to burn coal more cleanly, and we need to advance carbon sequestering.”
Carbon sequestering, or carbon capture, is a process whereby carbon emissions are captured and stored before they enter the atmosphere. Most experts estimate developing and deploying that technology at coal-fired power plants throughout the nation is many years away.
“It will be another 12 years at a cost of $2 billion per year, in addition to what the government is already spending on related programs,” Popovich said.
Popovich indicated the federal government has not made the commitment to such a costly transformation, and that some national politicians are more interested in simply shutting down the coal industry.
Popovich works in Washington, representing the mining industry to Congress.
“There is clearly a political agenda here, driven by an irrational zeal to drive coal from its place of prominence, despite the fact that it is being used more cleanly than ever before, and that the technology is being developed to make it even cleaner,” he said.
Popovich said Congress might attempt to pass legislation within three years that would restrict carbon emissions, and consequently the burning of coal.
“Clean coal technology can work, but we can’t have a standard in place that will damage the coal-based economy before we have the technology in place to meet that standard,” he said.
Overly aggressive caps on carbon emissions would cost the utility companies billions of dollars as they are forced to switch to more expensive power sources, according to Dan Riedinger, a spokesman for the Edison Electric Institute, an association that represents 70 percent of U.S. electric companies.
According to Riedinger, this cost increase would hurt both the coal and utility industries for the long term, robbing them of the capital they need to develop clean coal technologies.
“If Congress were to do so (regulate emissions) unrealistically, we would have no choice as an industry but to close coal-fired power plants,” he said. “We will have no choice but to raise prices for our consumers, and this will rob us of dollars for new technology development, which could make coal cleaner.”
Riedinger said there is a wide range of opinions on Capitol Hill regarding greenhouse emissions and coal-fired generation. He believes that while some in Congress understand the complexity of the issues, others favor proposals that may do immediate damage to the coal industry.
“Some bills being considered are not a good harbinger for coal-fired generation. Others understand the need to maintain coal and understand that global climate change has been a long time in the making, and won’t be resolved overnight,” Riedinger said.
In a move that signified the opposition of many lawmakers to the coal industry, Congress turned down an opportunity this year to develop technology that allows for coal to be made into diesel fuel, according to Ken Nemeth, executive director of the Southern States Energy Board.
“We can make diesel from coal,” Nemeth said. “It’s environmentally clean, and we get a product that is better than gasoline.”
However, the 2007 energy bill approved by Congress was stripped of a provision that facilitated the technology’s development. According to Nemeth, the move was a defeat for coal and amounted to a lost opportunity to diversify coal’s uses in emission-free ways.
Referring to well organized environmental groups and politicians throughout the nation, Nemeth said, “It is important for the coal industry to realize that they are under assault by forces throughout this country.”
August 02, 2007 20 21 GMT
By Bart Mongoven
The U.S. House of Representatives is expected to vote this week on its version of a new energy bill. Although the measure calls for a dramatic shift in U.S. energy policy -- it contains numerous subsidies for research into new technologies for electricity generation and energy conservation -- it would hardly usher in a revolution in the U.S. approach to energy matters.
In supporting slight shifts in energy use and energy sourcing, the bill sidesteps the most important emerging issue in the energy debate: whether to choose an approach that places great faith in future technology or one that does not.
The faith-based path essentially is a gamble, though it also is the one that offers the greatest potential rewards, both for the U.S. economy and for global efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The problem, of course, is that while it is easy to anticipate future breakthroughs, it is difficult (and possibly irresponsible) to build policy on theoretical advances. It also might be a politically impossible path to take. To deal with this, policymakers are looking for "safety valves" -- remedies they can use if promising technological improvements fail to materialize.
Breakpoint One: Generation
Demand for electricity in the United States is growing at roughly 1 percent per year. This figure is far below the rate of economic growth, which is averaging roughly 3 percent per year, and is less than the growth in demand for power just 10 years ago, which stood in the 2.5 percent per year range. This means the U.S. economy is becoming more energy efficient, but demand is still increasing -- and that will require building additional power capacity.
Over the next three years, this capacity will come mostly from natural gas facilities. In the following five years, however, new generation will be achieved mostly through construction of new coal-fired plants. The reason for this is simple: Clean air regulations and anticipated climate change policies make natural gas preferable, but the United States simply lacks the natural gas required to feed its growth over a long period of time. Meanwhile, the future of nuclear power, while looking better, is not assured. Coal, on the other hand, is the United States' most plentiful fuel, and power companies are betting that new technologies -- such as integrated gasification combined cycle -- will allow coal plants to pass regulatory hurdles.
Experts in this technology contend that the coal plants of 2020 will be far less polluting than those of 2010. Industry and the U.S. government have invested billions of dollars over the past 15 years in new coal technologies, and development of "negligible emission" technology is showing promising results. Researchers anticipate that in 10 years utilities will be building coal facilities that have far lower carbon, nitrogen and sulfur emissions than today's natural gas facilities. If we can hold out, researchers argue, the emissions profile can be dramatically changed.
This brings us back to that pesky 1 percent growth in power demand. The U.S. economy and its thirst for energy are staggeringly large. Given the combined effect of growing demand and the attrition of older facilities, U.S. utilities plan to build an additional 45,000 megawatts of capacity -- more than 200 power plants -- between now and 2012. Most of these new facilities are expected to still be generating power in 2050 -- when they will be considered as crude and dirty as 40-year-old coal plants are today. However, given that technology is on the cusp of great advancement, each plant built in the next 10 years will be outdated in the relative blink of an eye. For air and climate activists, and those policymakers who support environmental causes, the next-generation technology is so promising that anything that can forestall a 40-year investment in a facility today is welcomed.
This brings us to the question of the plug-in hybrid.
Automakers, especially General Motors Corp., have put significant faith in the development of a next generation of electric cars -- mostly hybrid vehicles that run on gasoline and on electricity drawn from both the gasoline engine and a power outlet (as opposed to the hybrids of today, whose electricity is generated only by the gasoline engine). Automakers promise these vehicles will soon be on the market, though, given the current electric grid, they acknowledge that plug-in hybrids will generate more greenhouse gas and other emissions than gasoline-only hybrids. Plug-in supporters, then, argue that we must change the grid -- a change that might be better if it is put off for a decade.
Infrastructure
A similar question is emerging in the biofuels debate. Members of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee took turns July 30 criticizing the oil industry for not investing in the infrastructure necessary for biofuels to become a significant element of the U.S. vehicle fuel supply. While senators also chastened the federal government for its miserly investments in transportation and storage, they focused on the oil industry.
The lawmakers, however, ignored a natural question: Why would oil companies voluntarily invest in a competing product? They also ignored breakthroughs in biofuels that could make the development of a separate infrastructure moot.
In the most high-profile example of a potential biofuel breakthrough, The Wall Street Journal reported the morning of the Senate committee's hearing that California company LS9 claims to have developed a microbe that replaces traditional yeasts in ethanol fermentation. This microbe produces an ethanol that is more energy efficient and that does not have the corrosive qualities of traditional ethanol. If LS9's system works, its ethanol can use the existing infrastructure and be burned in gasoline engines (rather than relying on flex-fuel engines).
The LS9 technology is the most prominent so far in an approaching wave of energy-related technologies. Three years ago, the California venture capital community began to recognize that green technologies (dubbed "cleantech") held promise as a growth industry. As a result, the capital they invested in 2005 and 2006 is beginning to show results. The most famous of the high-tech venture capital firms, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, which provided seed money to Google, Yahoo, Genentech, Sun Microsystems and others, has invested more than $1 billion in green initiatives. Even the California Public Employees' Retirement System, the world's largest pension fund, has established a cleantech investment fund. LS9, for instance, was largely capitalized by Khosla Ventures, a venture capital firm founded by Vinod Khosla, a founder of Sun and a former Kleiner Perkins executive.
Industry is banking on this venture capital. For instance, GE CEO Jeff Immelt said July 30 that the company is counting on cleantech venture capital to provide the solutions to today's dilemmas. GE, he said, will then become the "second-tier investor." In effect, GE will buy the pioneering companies.
Rationality vs. Politics
As cleantech investments begin to show results, the infrastructure debate takes on many of the same characteristics as the plug-in hybrid debate: Is it better to wait for the technological breakthroughs -- an issue of patience and faith -- or to act now to make things as clean and efficient as they can be using current technologies? The question seems perfect for a logical analysis of cost and benefit. Analysts can assess the chances that certain new technologies (new yeasts, negligible-emissions coal plants) will indeed succeed and chart the ecological benefits of using these technologies when they become available versus 40-year investments in the best available technology today.
There are two problems with this approach. The first is that tomorrow's technology will always be better than today's, so someone eventually must decide to invest in a direction. This can be overcome with a second level of analysis, one that is less mathematical but still based on balancing the relative benefits of the next generation with current needs. The second problem is that policy is not made based on technical criteria and dispassionate analysis.
The math is intriguing, but this discussion coincides with an unprecedented confluence of sentiment: Americans feel dependent on expensive supplies from hostile countries, while they also are growing more concerned about climate change. As a result, political pressure is mounting on Washington to act on energy-related issues. Spurred by the war in Iraq, fears of climate change and high gasoline prices, the public is demanding that the government do something -- anything -- to "fix" the energy problems the country is facing.
One outcome of the rush to regulate is that policymakers have narrowed their focus to a few issues, led by biofuels, cellulosic ethanol and flex-fuel vehicles. Not only are policymakers excluding obvious current issues such as nuclear waste disposal, they also are missing the larger picture of total energy supply, demand and next-generation technologies. The Senate has passed a sweeping energy bill that reflects the rushed decision-making, and the House will likely follow suit by Aug. 4. These bills offer a mix of quick-fix solutions and funding for research, but they also are incomplete even in the areas of focus. For instance, they call for massive increases in ethanol production but provide no funding for ethanol infrastructure. This sets up a larger and more politicized energy and climate debate for 2008.
The current crop of energy bills build in some assumptions that technological improvements will come -- and a few include safety valves in case the improvements do not pan out. For example, under the climate bill offered by Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., the pace of greenhouse gas emissions reductions would be slowed if the price of complying with the law becomes too expensive for business -- which is to say, the requirements will be loosened if the technology is not developed to address crucial energy problems.
In theory, the reliance on safety valves could be the most rational way to build a policy that incorporates future technology but does not depend on it. This approach, however, remains highly controversial. Not only are such measures prone to political tampering, but many critics also argue that they essentially provide too easy of an out when the requirements get tough. However, there also is another way to look at it: As requirements begin to force a crisis, the premium for technological improvement will increase and, theoretically, so will cleantech investment.
The alternative is to pass laws whose requirements are currently impossible to meet. In going that route, lawmakers would be relying on the belief that technology will improve -- or that another generation of politicians will fix the mistakes.
Noch 9Wochen...
schönes Wochenende allen die mit gutem Sitzfleisch ausgestattet sind!!!
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Zu erkennen, wie nach jedem run bis 76,4% korregiert wurden! für mich ein zeichen der schnellen Geldmache, durch Zocker die schnelles Geld machen etc.
Das gute daran der Prozentteil der jenigen die bei den anstiegenen drin geblieben sind und alles ausgesessen haben ist sehr niedrig!!!
Silverado hatte sich sehr stark verhalten "mai & juni"(graue Zone), bis dann der Bruch der 61,8% Marke kam! wären wir von da aus wieder gestiegen(die Chancen standen nicht schlecht) das hätte viele ins Boot gelockt!
Silverado hat den Drucker angeschmissen um die Trendwende zu zerstören, sieht man deutlich in meinen vorherigen Beitrag! da kann man positives und negatives hinein interpretieren...
die Rechtecke in meinem Chart zeigen auch nochmal die länge des Zyklus an!
Doppelter Boden hält besser! Aktienvermehrung da gute Nachrichten im anmarsch.........
Dieser Beitrag verliert seinen Inhaltlichen Wert sollten wir unter 0,056€ beziehungsweise 0,08$ schließen +/- 0,005
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