Indian Monsoons, hydropower, and the supply of natural gas to the USA

I recently wrote about the increasing volumes of natural gas that were coming available as LNG from countries such as Qatar, just as the development of the gas shales in the United States was creating a glut of gas in the United States. We have seen the impacts of the glut in the drop in prices, a fall that still continues and the long-term decline in the number of rigs being used to drill for NG. Interestingly, and a comment on the growing preponderance of wells in the gas shales, the number of horizontal well drilling rigs has fallen, this year, less than the number of vertical rigs. However there is now a slight resurgence in drilling (up 7 horizontal and 13 vertical rigs). Given the potential that a global surplus of LNG might bring more to American shores, undercutting the price of the shale-sourced gas that rise in the number of active rigs might seem a little odd. But there are a couple of thoughts that should be born in mind.

The first is that the world needs natural gas as an energy source, and this is particularly true in Asia, where the potential partial failure of the monsoon with 40% of India being declared drought areas, means that there will be less hydro power available than in normal seasons. So far the rains are 25% below normal (an event which I noted earlier has been tied to El Nino events. One of the ways that India is hoping to solve its chronic shortage of electric power has been by a greater commitment to hydro-generation.

Hydropower is viewed as more flexible than most other sources of fuel, which is important to India, where much of the demand is domestic.

As an illustration, if the approximately 150 million households in India were to turn on two 100 watt light bulbs at 7 pm, the power system would experience an instantaneous surge in demand of about 30,000 MW! Today, this peak demand is often met by households turning on small gasolene and diesel generation units, which, in addition to being polluting, are a serious health hazard in congested areas. And, with rising wealth, households are switching on a lot more than two light bulbs. Although hydropower plants are subject to daily and seasonal variations in water flows (which affects the production of electricity at that point in time), they are not subject to the fluctuations in fuel costs that trouble thermal power plants.

Thus the country is negotiating with the World Bank for increasing support for hydro projects. But they need rain.


Unfortunately, at the moment, power supplied from existing plant is down 10% from last year, while demand has risen. The water levels in the reservoirs, for example, should normally rise by about 5% over a monsoon week, last week it was only 3% . Given that hydropower provides about a quarter of the nations generation capacity this could put further strain on the national economy, where the back-up bill is estimated to be $26 billion a year, and the cost of the outages alone totals some $9.2 billion.

So where can additional power be obtained. One solution is through increased use of natural gas and Qatar’s RasGas has just agreed to increase LNG supplies by 50% starting in November, upping the tonnage from 5 million to 7.5 million tons per year. This comes at a time when India is developing its own gas supplies , but while they equate to 880 – 1,000 mcf/day, demand rose to 9,800 mcf/day last year (up 25%). Thus the increased need for the LNG cargoes, and the current purchase raises the shipping to 120 cargoes a year.

At the same time Turkey has been visiting Qatar seeking to improve its imports of natural gas (currently via LNG) but with the hope, down the road, of seeing the gas shipped by pipeline. The current target is some 140,000 mcf over the course of a year (average of 383 mcf/day). Some of that supply will come from production originally aimed for the UK where demand has fallen.

But if it also reduces the volumes that might otherwise be targeted toward the US this winter it will potentially stop the continued slide in US prices and help the industry, though not the consumer. Perhaps it is in that hope that rig numbers are beginning to creep up.

The second thought is that the production from gas shale wells is very short lived (60% production in the first year) and thus starting up new production to replace the older declining wells is a smart thing to do, and someone is probably tailoring that into their calculations as they place new well orders.

Water problems in Nepal

There is a growing tendency to assign the cause of weather events that badly impact different populations to climate change, and thereby to add additional “evils” to those who generate “greenhouse gases.” I noted this last week about the story of the Nile Delta and the causes of erosion and lack of fertility that farmers are now seeing. As I showed the events have nothing to do with climate change or AGW, despite the bits of the story that implied that they were.

The events don’t even have to have happened yet. This week Oxfam International were pointing to the change in climate threatening the livelihood of the people of Nepal.

Nepal will likely suffer more frequent droughts because of climate change, Oxfam International said in a report released in Kathmandu. River levels will decline due to the reduced rainfall and glacial retreat, making it harder to irrigate crops and provide water for livestock.

Now here is the problem that I have with that last sentence. When there is precipitation in the mountains, it is either retained in the mountains as ice and snow, or it goes into the rivers where it is available for irrigation. If glaciers grow then less of that precipitation is available for irrigation, if glaciers retreat, that means that they are melting and not only not capturing the precipitation but are also providing some of their stored water to be available for irrigation. This supply of more water is a resource critically needed in China as well as Nepal, and provides the great rivers that flow from the Himalayas and are relied on by millions of people.

The report itself is a integrated mix of things that might happen if the global temperature increases by 2 degC by 2050 (35% of the Himalayan glaciers are projected to disappear) and a recent winter drought that has left many farmers without adequate food supplies.

However this has been a poor year for the monsoon in India, and Kumar et al have shown that the failure of the monsoon correlates with El Nino events – something that we are now moving into.

Thus the actual events that are reported in the Oxfam report have a cause that is likely not due to global warming but to a predictable and regular other cause. However, by combining the effects of the drought and the poor weather, with the predicted events that might occur with a dramatic increase in global temperature, a confusing picture of contradictory predictions has been built. Monsoons, sadly, have failed before, and for the same reason.

It is understandable that folk seek to find a scapegoat when the weather is inhospitable, however, as with other countries, an additional part of the problem in Nepal arises from the increase in population, particularly in the Kathmandu Valley. To solve the problem the government has just laid the foundation stone for a 26.5 km long tunnel to bring 170 million liters of drinking water a day (MLD) into the valley. It is known as the Melamchi Drinking Water Project and is due to be completed in 2013. The work is being carried out by a Chinese contractor. The valley needs some 240 MLD and can supply only 90 MLD, for the 2 million inhabitants of the valley. Most of the rain (it gets about 1.5 m/year) comes in the monsoon season between June and August.

It has not met with universal approbation and does not help those living in the hills. However they have other problems since while the communities live on the tops of the hills, the water is in streams in the valleys and so women and children can spend up to 4 – 6 hours a day just carrying water. There has recently been an innovation – called the Large Fog Collector (LFC)

The Large Fog Collectors (LFC) are constructed using 4 x 8 meter sheets of polypropylene mesh, which when suspended on a ridgeline resembles a large volleyball net. Warm air from the Bay of Bengal moves inland during the monsoon, where it intercepts the varied topology of the Himalayan foothills. As the air moves up into valleys at higher altitudes, it mixes with cooler air and condenses, forming fog. As fog passes through the fog collectors, water droplets cling to the weave of the mesh, and filter down into a discharge system that stores the water in 20,000 liter ferro-cement tanks. Water quality testing found that all parameters meet WHO guidelines. . . . . . . . Here six large fog collectors produce an average of 1700 liters of water per day for the villages 75 inhabitants.

Although relatively cheap they do require both maintenance and frequent fog which they get in Nepal, Peru and Chile.

The glaciers in the Himalayas occupy some 193,000 sq miles and at present the melting and retreat of the glaciers, which has been been going on since the end of the Little Ice Age, has accelerated since 1970. It is the melting of the glaciers that provides the water for the rivers and people that they serve, and provide a supply of water in the seasons that the rains don’t fall. It will be interesting to see if the changing global climate conditions of this century have any impact on the melt rate.

The nations that are served are thus in a bit of a cleft stick, since during the Little Ice Age the glaciers grew, and thus supplied less water to their dependants than they do now, so the current melting does have some benefits, that should be recognized.

But if it continues too long then the water resource will be gone - depending on how the temperature actually continues to rise, if it does, this is going to lead to a difficult conumdrum, though likely over a longer time period than is currently being used as a discussion point.

On the other hand (h/t Marc Morano) when Asia gets hotter, then in the past the glaciers have started growing again.

A group of Himalayan glaciers grew six-fold during much hotter summers, when temperatures rose steeply by six degrees Celsius in Asia, baffling geologists.

Energy Shortages, the Monsoon, India and Pakistan

The international impacts from a lack of sufficient power are often missed when debate swirls about the price of oil and gas, and the need to control emissions as part of an effort to change climate dynamics. There is a site, Energy Shortage, which provides information on the different parts of the world where energy shortages are occurring, both as short-term events, such as the power outage in Belize over the weekend a week ago, (though with more forecast) and the longer term problems that I have discussed before with power shortages between demand and supply. This impacts countries such as India which currently has a gap of between 15,000 and 20,000 MW between what is needed and what is available. Pakistan is currently seeing both problems, a short-term (though now over 48-hours) blackout in Karachi, because of torrential downpours due to the monsoon, and a longer term national shortage of more than 3,000 MW .

Part of the problem in this part of the world is that it relies on the rains of the monsoon season to provide hydroelectric power. Thus far, in India, the monsoon has not been strong, though the converse is the case in Pakistan, as the situation in Karachi demonstrates. There the rain has been sufficient to restart operations at one of the hydroelectric plants, that at Mangla, which is producing 220 MW, and expects to double that in a few days. Overall the national picture has improved over the last year, it being reported that while the overall shortfall was 4,633 MW last year, the drop to the current levels shows a significant improvement. Thus load shedding of 10 – 12 hours last year, has fallen to 8 – 10 hours this year.

But in India the rains are late and have been, until recently, weak.

It has been a heart-breaking June, with the fabled wet wind from the southwest absent in most regions normally on its itinerary. The northern plains are bone dry, with temperatures regularly touching the mid-40s in centigrade. They are the last port of call for the complex, mobile weather system which usually arrives there in July after drenching the vast swathes of peninsular India in June. But the monsoon has not even kept this date, for a number of reasons. . . . . . . By the end of June, the rains were estimated at 54% below normal levels in these parts, with the deficit reaching 75% in central India . . . . . . According to data collected since the 1940s, "normal" is 890 millimeters for the whole season.

The impact on the country is still developing

After the predictions were made public, the first knee-jerk reaction came from Punjab. The state banned the use of air-conditioners in government offices, boards and corporations - despite the sweltering heat - so eight hours of uninterrupted power could be supplied to the farm sector. . . . . The monsoon, which runs from June through September, is such a big thing in India that a bad year has the potential to topple governments. Even now, 60% of Indian farmland is dependent on rains, not irrigation. It goes beyond the economic, the imprint goes into the very socio-cultural make-up of a nation.

It is, however, not only food production that is now threatened

For instance, the Tehri hydroelectric power station in Uttarakhand supplies power to New Delhi and its hinterland. The water level in its reservoirs has shrunk to dangerously low levels - 741 meters against a normal level of 830 meters during monsoons. The Bhakra dam, the biggest hydroelectric project in northern India, has water flowing in from the mountains. Its reservoir levels remain lower than they were last season.

The problems extend to Bangalore, which is the hub of much of the IT in India, but where the situation is little better

Monday saw the worst power situation so far since the start of the monsoon in early June. Two hydroelectric power stations stopped generation for a few hours to conserve water and one unit of the thermal power station at Raichur in north Karnataka tripped, plunging many areas in Bangalore and the state into darkness in the evening.

Added to the misery of Bangaloreans was a sudden downpour, accompanied by heavy winds, lightning and thunder which too disrupted connections in many areas of the city.

That heavy rain marked the onset of what many are now hoping will be a regular series of rains that will provide the water that the nation needs. However the rains have come over a month late and this is a problem since the monsoon provides up to 80% of India’s rainfall. The hope is that when the season is over the shortfall may be as little as 7% of the average, with serious concern only arising if the shortfall rises to 20%.

It is however, not just with rain that the country is beginning to fall short. More than half of India’s power generation comes from coal, and the stocks for the power plants are reportedly down some 50% from normal.

NEW DELHI, July 13 (Reuters) - Coal stocks with power plants in India halved from normal levels to 11 million tonnes at July 6, with many thermal plants facing uncomfortable supply positions, junior power minister Bharatsinh Solanki said.

He said 31 power stations had a critical supply condition, having a coal stock of less than 7 days, and of these 10 plants were "supercritical" having a coal stock of less than 4 days.

It is light of this situation that the recent friction reported between Secretary Clinton and the Indian Government must be born in mind. India intends to construct something on the order of 78.7 gigawatts of new power plant in the next five years, much of which will be fueled by coal. The country needs the power, and there is little other than coal that can be expected to meet this demand. As a result there was the following report

A July 19 event intended to showcase cooperation on clean energy technology at a “green” building outside New Delhi spotlighted the debate. The Indian environment minister said India resents demands from the U.S. for adoption of legally binding caps on carbon emissions.

“There is simply no case for the pressure” considering India produces among the lowest per capita emissions in the world and 500 million of its citizens have no access to commercial energy, Minister Jairam Ramesh told Clinton during a closed-door discussion that a reporter was allowed to observe.

Let us hope that the monsoon brings enough rain that this ends up being a problem that the Indian government does not have to think about in the next three months.