New Hampshire combined temperatures

Well there are still a couple of states to do in the North-East, if I am to make this comprehensive, before I turn around and look elsewhere. So I am going to do New Hampshire today. It has only 5 USHCN stations and 1 GISS station at Concord, which has a record since 1880. (And I updated the bottom of this post on Sunday).

As is usual practice I’m going to tabulate the data from these stations first, and then, as I generate the graphs, comment. It turns out, however, that the third site in the USHCN set is at First Connecticut Lake, and that turns out to be “nestled in the quiet town of” Pittsburg, NH, so I will use that population, for the table. (It is still only 808 folk).

With only a few sites the conclusions are not, were they to stand alone, necessarily that reliable, but they are worth looking into, to see how they fit in with the other states. Firstly therefore how does the USHCN data compare with the GISS station. New Hampshire has a mean elevation of 1,000 ft and goes all the way up to Mount Washington at 6,288 ft. The Concord GISS station is at about 400 ft, and there are two of the USHCN stations above the mean. I will show the plots for the TOBS data and comment about the differences with the homogenized USHCN values.

The first question is how well does the GISS value reflect the average for the state? Well on average, over the century or more, it is 2.6 degrees higher.



There is a very slight increase in the difference over time. For reasons that will become obvious with the last slide of this post, if the homogenized USHCN data is used, rather than the raw data, then the difference significantly reduces over the time period.

Looking at how temperatures have changed in the state since 1895. The TOBS data shows a slight increase (0.1 degrees in a hundred years) for the state. The homogenized data shows a rate increase of 1.6 degrees over that same time interval.


Turning to the geographical factors controlling temperature in the state, the regression coefficients are helped by the low number of readings.

First there is latitude:

Because of homogenization, the regression coefficient with that data drops to 0.85, and the graph coefficient changes to -4.2.

Even with the small number of stations it is not possible to correlate well with longitude:


And in this case there is no change in the correlation whether TOBS or homogenized data is used. Looking at elevation, again the small number of stations help the correlation.


The homogenized result has a slightly lower regression of 0.92.

In terms of population, bearing in mind that this is a relatively lowly populated state, the regression is better than usual.


The state is thus, despite the low number of stations, fairly consistent in regard to the shape of the curves that are coming from the data. Including this one:


The adjustment over the century is on the order of 1.8 degrees.

There are apparently some other problems with some of the USHCN stations but those deal with location, and tie into the population estimation using local light, since we aren’t going that route, I mention it since there may be other problems I have not caught.

And for those wondering what all this about, down on the right hand side I list the states I have looked at so far, and the initial place I started with was Missouri, so you might want to look at that state first for more of an explanation.

Addendum - Kinuachdrach has asked a question in the comment below and I thought it interesting to plot (for the 13 states I have looked at so far) the value of the regression coefficient as a function of gradient for the temperature elevation plots.

Here it is:

Not quite sure what drives the outliers (Illinois and Indiana).

The Chinese diesel situation

Well it appears that we are about back up to $90 a barrel oil which is the top end of the range which the Saudi Oil Minister said he was comfortable with, the other day. However, I suspect that were it to go higher, it would not change the current Saudi plans on oil production.

It might, however, draw more attention to the problems of dealing with an increasing demand for oil, in face of a limited ability to meet that demand. OPEC have just announced that they see next year’s average demand to be at 87 mbd, up about 120,000 bd over their estimate last month. Whether that projection proves realistic will depend on what happens in Asia.

Refineries in Asia have been faced with an increased demand from China, where there have been recent shortages of diesel across country, likely leading to the price increases that have just been imposed. Part of the cause of the increase is because refineries in China were reported to be losing up to $18 a barrel in refining oil they were buying at $80 a barrel. (Diesel was at $2.43 a gallon, and prices have been raised 10%, which given the current oil price, still leaves the refineries making a loss). Nevertheless Chinese government data shows that refining reached a record volume (8.8 mbd) in October, at the same time that overall Chinese crude imports fell for the month. In light of the increased demand it is expected that this month’s production will be even higher. Sinopec will also import feedstock for ethylene production so that refineries that were being used to supply the feed can, instead, concentrate on making diesel.

The unexpected size of the problem has been caused by the Chinese government trying to lower electricity consumption to meet a national target for energy savings by the end of the year. As a result of those decisions coal-fired power fell back, in October to the levels of a year ago, after an earlier increase. Because of these cuts in power, those who still need it (including metal production plants) have switched to diesel generators, with the increase in demand overwhelming the available supply. (Though some have had to close including 100,000 tons of aluminum smelting capacity). Thus the situation may be transient and improve, with electricity supply, after the end of the year, though that is not necessarily a given at this point, since it is dependant on government policies. (And hidden in that discussion has been the Chinese record refinery outputs of gasoline, which also hit a new record this month.)

For countries in Asia outside China the situation is reversed. With the profit on refining Dubai crude at over $14 a barrel in Singapore, refineries around the region are seeking to increase imports of crude. (China has been a net exporter of diesel until recently, but demand had grown, until recently, at 13% this year leading China to the potential switch to becoming a net importer of diesel, though that is debatable.) There are thus some strains evident in current ability to match existing demand.

In addition to getting additional supplies of crude from Russia, China has also increased crude imports from Iran, helping that country at a time when gasoline rationing and sanctions are being blamed for an 18% drop in internal gasoline demand.

In the United States there has been an increase in distillate demand according to the latest TWIP that is somewhat greater than usual:

(EIA)

The heating season is however anticipated to be, in general warmer than usual (sorry NorthEast), reducing heating fuel needs.

Fuel expenditures for individual households are highly dependent on local weather conditions, market size, the size and energy efficiency of individual homes and their heating equipment, and thermostat settings. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) projects population-weighted U.S. heating degree-days will be about 4 percent lower than last winter. However, heating degree-day projections vary widely between regions. For example, NOAA projects that the South, a large market for propane, will be about 17 percent warmer than last winter, while the Northeast will be about 4 percent colder. The largest residential propane consuming region is the Midwest, where 8 percent of the homes heat with this fuel. Projected temperatures in this area are 2.2 percent warmer than last year. EIA projects Midwest propane prices to increase by 18 percent this winter while consumption in that region falls by 2.3 percent, resulting in an expenditure increase of 15 percent.

Oh, and in case you missed it, following my piece on explosives on Sunday, just to prove that not everything in life goes perfectly, here is a chimney demolition falling the wrong way.

The BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling Commission

Courtesy of MoonofA, I am able to tell you that this past weekend the final act in the closing of the Deepwater Horizon well was the placing of a steel cap on top of the well, after the top plugs had been put in place, and the well was ready to be abandoned.



And on Monday the Oil Spill Commission began two days of public hearings.

As part of this, the Oil Spill Commission has issued its preliminary conclusions which are:

• Flow path was exclusively through shoe track and up through casing.
• Cement (potentially contaminated or displaced by other materials) in shoe track and in some portion of annular space failed to isolate hydrocarbons.
• Pre-job laboratory data should have prompted redesign of cement slurry.
• Cement evaluation tools might have identified cementing failure, but most operators would not have run tools at that time. They would have relied on the negative pressure test.
• Negative pressure test repeatedly showed that primary cement job had not isolated hydrocarbons.
• Despite those results, BP and TO personnel treated negative pressure test as a complete success.
• BP’s temporary abandonment procedures introduced additional risk.
• Number of simultaneous activities and nature of flow monitoring equipment made kick detection more difficult during riser displacement.
• Nevertheless, kick indications were clear enough that if observed would have allowed the rig crew to have responded earlier.
• Once the rig crew recognized the influx, there were several options that might have prevented or delayed the explosion and/or shut in the well.
• Diverting overboard might have prevented or delayed the explosion. Triggering the EDS prior to the explosion might have shut in the well and limited the impact of any explosion and/or the blowout.
• Technical conclusions regarding BOP should await results of forensic BOP examination and testing.
• No evidence at this time to suggest that there was a conscious decision to sacrifice safety concerns to save money.

Needless to say these conclusions have not all been met with complete agreement, even the first has been challenged by Halliburton. The report on the test of the cement is revealing:

We asked Halliburton to supply us samples of materials like those actually used at the Macondo well so that we could investigate issues surrounding the cement failure. Halliburton provided us off-the-shelf cement and additive materials used at the Macondo well from their stock. Although these materials did not come from the specific batches used at the Macondo well, they are in all other ways identical in composition to the slurry used there. Chevron agreed as a public service to test the cement slurry on behalf of the Commission. Chevron employs some of the industry’s most respected cement experts, and it maintains a state-of-the art cement testing facility in Houston, Texas. Halliburton agreed that the Chevron lab was highly qualified for this work.

We attach Chevron’s report of its laboratory tests, and we have invited one of its experts to discuss that report with you at the public hearing on November 9.

Chevron’s report states, among other things, that its lab personnel were unable to generate stable foam cement in the laboratory using the materials provided by Halliburton and available design information regarding the slurry used at the Macondo well. Although laboratory foam stability tests cannot replicate field conditions perfectly, these data strongly suggest that the foam cement used at Macondo was unstable. This may have contributed to the blowout.

Halliburton has stated publicly that it tested the Macondo cement before pumping it on April 19th and 20th, and that its tests indicated the cement would be stable. When Chevron informed us of the preliminary results of its tests, we asked Halliburton to give us all of the data from all tests it had run on the Macondo cement slurry.

The documents provided to us by Halliburton show, among other things, that its personnel conducted at least four foam stability tests relevant to the Macondo cement slurry. The first two tests were conducted in February 2010 using different well design parameters and a slightly different slurry recipe than was finally used. Both tests indicated that this foam slurry design was unstable.

Halliburton provided data from one of the two February tests to BP in an email dated March 8, 2010. The data appeared in a technical report along with other information. There is no indication that Halliburton highlighted to BP the significance of the foam stability data or that BP personnel raised any questions about it. There is no indication that Halliburton provided the data from the other February test to BP.

Halliburton conducted two additional foam stability tests in April, this time using the actual recipe and design poured at the Macondo well. We believe that its personnel conducted the first of these two tests on or about April 13, seven days before the blowout. Lab personnel used slightly different lab protocols than they had used in February. Although there are some indications that lab personnel may have conducted this test improperly, it once again indicated that the foam slurry design was unstable. The results of this test were reported internally within Halliburton by at least April 17, though it appears that Halliburton never provided the data to BP.

As was brought out in the hearing, the resulting protocol that was implemented for the abandonment of the well at that time also put additional pressure on the cement.

BP’s temporary abandonment procedures at Macondo could have introduced additional risks, such as putting more pressure on Halliburton Co.’s cement job by removing mud and replacing it with seawater, setting the surface cement plug 3,000 ft deep, or deciding not to run a cement bond log test immediately, he continued. 

“What is of additional concern for us is that the procedures for temporary abandonment were changing up until the very last minute,” said Grimsley. “It is not clear to us why decisions on these procedures were changing in the days before the blowout. You have to make choices on the fly when conditions are changing offshore, but this apparently was not the case here.” There also was no indication that anyone at the rig called to shore in the three hours after the negative pressure test ended and the well blew out and said that test readings were odd, he indicated. 



Bartlit said BP’s decision to halt drilling nearly 2,000 ft short of the well’s original intended depth may have been based on concern that it had to keep mud and cement from leaking into adjacent formations, which could have fractured from unusually high pressure in the well. “They stopped because they were interested in well integrity and safety,” he said. Surprises in the reservoir can cause you to make changes which can affect what happens later. As near as we can tell, talking to experts, BP did the right thing here.”

Halliburton have issued a comment on the testing of the cement.

Halliburton has only recently received and is continuing to review the results, which it believes raises a number of questions. Halliburton is issuing this press release to provide information about the content and its preliminary views regarding Chevron’s cement testing report and the letter.

Halliburton believes that significant differences between its internal cement tests and the Commission’s test results may be due to differences in the cement materials tested. The Commission tested off-the-shelf cement and additives, whereas Halliburton tested the unique blend of cement and additives that existed on the rig at the time Halliburton’s tests were conducted. Halliburton also noted that it has been unable to provide the Commission with cement, additives and water from the rig because it is subject to a Federal Court preservation order but that these materials will soon be released to the Marine Board of Investigation. Halliburton believes further comment on Chevron’s tests is premature and should await careful study and understanding of the tests by Halliburton and other industry experts.

With respect to Halliburton’s internal tests, the letter concludes that “only one of the four tests” showed a stable slurry. Halliburton noted that two of those tests were conducted in February and were preliminary, pilot tests. As noted in the letter, those tests did not include the same slurry mixture and design as that actually used on the Macondo well because final well conditions were not known at that time. Contrary to the letter, however, the slurry tested in February was not “a very similar foam slurry design to the one actually pumped at the Macondo well….” Additionally, there are a number of significant differences in testing parameters, including depth, pressure, temperature and additive changes, between Halliburton’s February tests and two subsequent tests Halliburton conducted in April. Halliburton believes the first test conducted in April is irrelevant because the laboratory did not use the correct amount of cement blend. Furthermore, contrary to the assertion in the letter, BP was made aware of the issues with that test. The second test conducted in April was run on the originally agreed upon slurry formulation, which included eight gallons of retarder per 100 sacks of cement, and showed a stable foam.

BP subsequently instructed Halliburton to increase the amount of retarder in the slurry formulation from eight gallons per 100 sacks of cement to nine gallons per 100 sacks of cement. Tests, including thickening time and compressive strength, were performed on the nine gallon formulation (the cement formulation actually pumped) and were shared with BP before the cementing job had begun. A foam stability test was not conducted on the nine gallon formulation.

Their release concludes:

Well logs and rig personnel confirm that the well was not flowing after the cement job. BP and/or others, following the misinterpreted negative tests conducted after the cement job, proceeded to displace mud in the production casing and riser with lighter seawater, allowing the well to flow. Given these numerous intervening causes, Halliburton does not believe that the foam cement design used on the Macondo well was the cause of the incident.

The Commission web site has some beautifully rendered animations of the drilling process, among others. However, apart from taking over an hour for me to download, the drilling animation, among other things, shows the drilling bits creating holes larger than they are, and at the same size beyond the cased section as the well had before the casing was inserted. This does not happen, the well continues at the bit diameter, which is itself smaller than the internal diameter of the casing inserted into the hole over the interval.

And one other note, it appears that even though the moratorium on drilling has been lifted, no permits are available.

Ensco Offshore claims that since the ban was lifted Oct. 12, the government has not issued a single permit that would allow the resumption of any previously suspended drilling activities.

The government doesn't seem to dispute that allegation, saying in a late Monday filing that it must ensure applications meet regulations toughened after the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

Breaking rock in a surface coal mine

There is a growing concern, as fossil fuels are recovered from the ground, that the cost of the energy required to extract and process them is rising, and that a point may be reached where it is no longer energy-cost effective to continue with production. One of the big questions that I have in that debate relates to the use of explosives in extracting the mineral. Mining tends to use significantly more explosive than other industries (and that includes the military). I was reminded of this when, in the course of demilitarizing unused ammunition, we looked for civilian uses for the explosive that we had removed. To begin with the explosives tend to be of different types, so the best of one is not necessarily that much use in the other, but more to the point the quantities that would be generated were trivial, relative to those of industrial need.

Why do we use the explosive in the first place? Well coal seams are generally found under a certain amount of rock and soil, the overburden, and while the soil can be relatively easily removed by scrapers, and similar equipment, the rock must be broken into easily handleable pieces before it can be moved. The soil is removed and stored, so that, after the coal is gone, the land can be restored – there are, in most countries now, strong regulations regarding reclamation, and a significant effort is made to achieve land recovery after mining.

Acorn Bank open cast site, just after reclamation.


I have put this picture up in part, because it is rare for those who debate the issues of mining to show what the mine looks like after reclamation. To achieve this level of restoration, however, the site must be catalogued before mining, and the soil and overburden segregated so that it can be restored, and the conditions re-established, after the mine has passed.

Scraper that could be used to remove and replace soil (Source Caterpillar).

After the soil has been removed, then there are usually several tens of feet of rock that will lie over the coal. Before the coal can be mined this rock must be broken first, before it can be moved. The fracturing is usually done by drilling large (say 8-inch) diameter holes down through the rock, and then filling them about two-thirds full of an explosive. As a general rule you don't want to fill them all the way, since if you did, then when the explosive went off it would just shoot back out of the hole. The large columns of black smoke you see shooting from such blasts in movies are for effect. A skilled blaster will fire the entire round, and if you were to watch a slow-motion movie, the ground level would rise in a pattern, as the individual rows of charges went off, but there would be almost no gas vented from the holes. To confine the charge, the top part of each hole is filled with what is known as stemming, usually some of the rock particles that were removed from the hole during the drilling operation. Generally this fills the top third of the hole, after the explosive has been placed in the hole.

The explosive that is used is no longer gunpowder – though to get back to the EROI question that I started the post with – how do you count the amount of energy used by the explosive? Is it that required to make the powder – gathering the ingredients for gunpowder (as a number of novels will be glad to inform you) is not that energy intensive, and while milling the particles to achieve a better burn requires some effort, it is nowhere near the amount of energy released when the gunpowder is set off.

Modern blasting typically uses a mixture of ammonium nitrate and fuel oil, known as ANFO. (There are a number of videos on Youtube showing ANFO charges going off, you might start here ). A single blasting operation might use between 2 million and 5 million lbs of explosive. In conventional blasting the rock over the coal. (One of the largest disasters in Texas occurred when a ship loaded with ammonium nitrate blew up in 1947). In the simplified sketch below, the rock over the coal is first drilled and broken using the explosive charges, and then it is moved from over the coal to the spoil bank on the other side of the active mining section, so that the underlying coal can be taken out and away.


The typical picture of large, uncontrolled blasts that make the popular press are actually quite far from the truth as to what usually happens in this stage. And the fireball from firing a shot in coal is very unusual. (It could come from igniting any gas in the coal, or from burning some of the very fine coal particles that are formed in firing the shot). Where the ground just heaves a little and then settles back is the sign of a good shot, since all the energy has gone into breaking the rock, so that it is then easier to move.

The explosive is fired in rows, and this is to make the explosive work more efficiently. When you "fire" an explosive you are causing the chemicals in the charge to very rapidly turn to gas. At the same time the blast wave from the start of the reaction will have cracked the rock immediately around the drilled hole. Thus as the explosive turns to gas, that gas can penetrate into the cracks around the hole, causing them to grow out into the solid. The gas follows the cracks, and helps them to grow, while, at the same time "lifting" the rock away from the solid as the gas penetrates. At the same time, firing the explosive in a sequence lowers the overall vibration directed into the ground.

However there is a fair amount of wasted energy in just lifting the rock with the explosive gases, and then allowing it to fall back into place. Thus there is a growing practice to use that energy more effectively by having it not only break the rock, but also to “cast” it into the open space beside it, where it would otherwise be loaded by machine.

To cast the coal the blast holes are angled so that as this gas penetrates under pressure, (video ) it will also throw the rock some distance towards the area of the mine that has previously been worked. This is known as blast-casting and is not always needed. However by firing the rows of charges in sequence (using small delays set into the detonators that are connected together to set-off the individual charges) the rock nearest the edge of the last layer of rock removed is broken first. This removes some of the confinement of the next layer. In this fashion and with only millisecond level delays in each row, the entire rock in a strip overlying the coal can be fragmented and a significant portion of it moved into the open space beside the coal seam, where the last strip of coal had been removed. (Note that in the videos I referenced, the dust is usually from the rock impact, not the blast.)

The need is, therefore to use the explosive energy more efficiently, and I rather suspect that since, until recently this hasn’t been much of a concern, there is still considerable progress to be made in improving the efficiency of the process. For example, by switching to an emulsion explosive the hole is filled more completely than with the granules of ANFO.

But once the rock is broken and displaced it is still very simple to use shovels (albeit the rock is often moved with a dragline, and the coal then removed with the more precise control of an electric shovel).

Massachusetts combined temperatures and a summary

With New York completed last week I have actually got a collection of states that runs from one ocean to the other, but to make the Eastern connection more significant I am going to look at the temperatures in Massachusetts this week. Given the number of stations that there were in New York, it is a bit of a relief to find that there are only a dozen USHCN stations in the state. There is also, according to Chiefio’s list, only one GISS station in the state, in Boston. So that should make the initial data download relatively painless.

There was one snag in finding the Blue Hill Observatory, but it turns out (using Google Earth) that it is in Canton, MA, whose data I used. Having driven West from Boston in the past, I remembered that the road climbed almost all the way to the New York border. And, yet there seemed to be few stations with higher elevations, so I looked a bit more closely and there were only 2 stations in the western half of the state, and only two whose elevation was above the average. The rest of the stations had an elevation below 65 m, while the average elevation of the state is at 150 m. Given, as I will show that there is a strong negative correlation between temperature and elevation, the station locations are weighted to those closer to the sea.

Having said that I am going to use the TOBS plots to show how the temperatures have varied in the state over the last 115 years, and to look at the usual suspects (Latitude etc) to see how these affect the numbers. And because I have gone from one coast to the other, I thought I would tabulate some of the data that I have been plotting.

So firstly, how accurate is the GISS temperature in modeling average temperatures in the state.


As you can see, even with the average being taken from stations at lower altitudes, reading the GISS temperature at Logan Airport in Boston, which is sensibly on the sea, gives a temperature that is, on average 2.48 degrees warmer than that average, though it is going down a little.

For the state, as a whole, the temperature has been rising over the past 115 years, at a rate of around 2 deg per century.


However the temperature rise seems a little steeper pre-1950 than it has been since. The homogenized data that the USHCN generates suggests that the temperature rise has been somewhat higher, at 2.77 deg per century, with a higher R^2 of 0.43.

Looking at the effects of station location, the change in latitude continues to have an impact, though not nearly as significant as it has been in other states. This could, in part have been due to the two highest average station temperatures being for stations relatively close to sea-level. At the same time there are not that many stations in the state. (Interestingly the homogenization improves the R^2 value in this case, to 0.122, with a higher coefficient of -1.98, which is interesting if one looks at the table toward the end of the post).


The drivers of the eastern most stations being on the coast, and those further west being higher, means that there was a strong correlation with longitude:


Although the correlation is quite strong, I still feel that this is more due to the other factors that just longitude, and though the correlation with elevation is not quite as good (because of the higher temperatures of the two stations down at the coast) yet that also provides much of the explanation.


The homogenization of data reduces this correlation down to an R^2 of 0.33, one of the problems, I am beginning to think , of the process that they are using.

And the correlation with population continues to exist – note that the two highest temperatures are with the two largest cities.


Having now examined the states from Massachusetts to California, I thought to put the coefficients (as in temp = a x property + b, and tabulating the values of “a” and the R^2 values for the different states along the line. For population values, it should be remembered that the property has been converted to a log value first. (see the figure immediately above).


It can be seen that there is some consistency in the values for latitude, elevation and population, but not as consistent a set with longitude – bearing out my conjecture that there are other factors in play that influence the longitudinal correlation.

Oh, and one final thought – I did plot the difference between the homogenized data that the USHCN provides and the TOBS raw data, here it is.

High Speed Rail - Europe and the American Election

It was President Obama who famously said, after the 2008 vote that “Elections have Consequences.” Well two years later that dictum still applies (as it will two years from now). I bring it up since (h/t to Luis) the European Commission has just released a report on High Speed Rail which gives some of the progress that has been achieved on that continent since the first high speed line was inaugurated between Florence and Rome in 1977, though it was not until the service between Paris and Lyon in 1981 that the boom began. And now Europe has 3,861 miles of high-speed lines where trains can travel at faster than 150 mph (the fastest is over 220 mph in commercial service, 350 mph in trials). The inter-continental service is continuing to grow, though to facilitate progress the EU is seeking to develop common technical standards across the network. Unfortunately, after Tuesday, the prognosis is not that favorable to the change in the United States.



It will be a considerable boon in Europe, as expansion continues. Spain, for example, is planning on expanding the network so that 90% of the inhabitants are within 30 miles of a station. The results can be seen with the reduction in travel times between major cities. (And remember that the stations generally lie in the heart of the city, not an hour or so away as many airports now are).


It becomes faster, and more efficient, as well as (speaking personally) less physically tiring, to travel increasingly great distances in Europe by train, in contrast both with air and car. As a result, the report notes:

The advantages of HSLs, in terms of frequent connections (which can easily be modified depending on demand) and flexibility for passengers, have allowed the railways to compete more effectively against other modes of transport. Since 1997, over 6 million passengers a year have been using the Brussels–Paris HSL. As a result, flights have been cut back on this route.

Overall the growth in traffic has been a six-fold increase in usage.

Since high-speed lines were introduced, the number of passengers opting for this mode of transport has constantly increased. The number of passengers on all German, Belgian, Spanish, French, Italian and British lines increased from 15.2 billion passenger-kilometres (bpkm) in 1990 to 92.33 billion in 2008.

In looking at door-to-door travel times, the report chart shows that air becomes faster than conventional rail at a travel distance (in Europe) of around 240 miles, while air does not become faster than high speed lines until a distance of about 500 miles. I start to think about flying instead of driving at a distance of around 300 miles.

At the present time those dealing with the anticipated growth of the network over the next ten years have not, I suspect, taken into consideration the changing fuel availabilities of the next decade. If, as is a reasonable possibility, crude oil pops over $100 in the next year, thereby drawing increasing attention to the coming of Peak Oil, then it is likely that demand for improved rail traffic will likely rise significantly beyond the 25% increase in growth that has been projected. As I have noted before, trains in Europe are becoming increasingly full, at current rates of demand, even in off-peak hours. In the shorter term, as the report notes, train transport may also be helped by the increasing saturation of existing airports with flights. But it also leads to the problems of using rail to transport goods as well as people. These services have different imperatives, and so the report concludes that two separate systems will evolve.

The difference in speed between a (slower) goods train and a high-speed train impacts on rail traffic management for the simple reason that freight trains spend longer on the track and therefore use up more traffic capacity (train paths). This difference in speed may also cause safety problems when these two types of train pass. This makes safeguarding infrastructure availability, while guaranteeing optimum capacity and security, an extremely difficult task. Physically freeing train paths simply means dedicating HSLs solely to passenger traffic and giving freight a higher priority on conventional lines. This is an option being explored by Sweden in particular.

They do however expect that, if environmental policies are tightened, that rail traffic as a whole might increase to as high as 420 bpkm for the entire network by 2020, from 189 bpkm in 1999. The planned network expansion at present looks to being completed in 2030, at which time it will be at around 20,000 miles of track, and carry 535 bpkm per year, with extensions moving out into Eastern Europe. The initial connection to Russia will be through Finland.


The report even looks at the environmental impact of the change in travel mode, since it recognizes that while the trains are electrically powered, that power does not magically appear in the power lines.


And for those interested in energy efficiency

Although the environmental impact of HSLs can also be reduced by improving the energy efficiency of trains and working on other elements of the vehicle, the carbon foot- print of rail travel is still much smaller than that of air or road travel. In the case of a journey from Paris to Marseilles, CO2 emissions in grams per passenger-kilometre (g/pkm) are just 2.7 g/pkm by HS train, compared with 153.0 g/pkm by air and 115.7 g/pkm by car. From the point of view of energy efficiency, HSTs also perform better, using 12.1 grams of petrol per passenger-kilometre, compared with 17.6 for conventional trains, 18.3 for a coach, 29.9 for a car and 51.5 for an aircraft.

So how does this tie into the first paragraph? Well in the United States, and a part of the Stimulus from the Federal Government, high speed lines had been proposed, with funding from Washington. However, with the election of Republican governors in several states due to receive that money, the plans may have to change. The new governor of Wisconsin, for example, has vowed to kill the high-speed line between Madison and Milwaukee. This was meant to be part of a network that would run from Chicago to Minneapolis, and stopping the project will likely cost the state money and jobs – but as a top campaign issue it is likely something the Governor-elect may have to follow up on.

Similarly in Ohio, the incoming Governor, John Kasich has said that “Passenger rail is dead in Ohio.” In this case he was discussing the $400 million plan to restart passenger service between Cincinnati, Columbus and Cleveland.

Work on the high-speed Florida link has already started, this is expected to carry up to two million folk a year from Tampa to Orlando or back, by 2015. It was not favored by Rick Scott who was just elected Governor of the State, though some of his opposition may come from the investment needed to extend the link from Orlando down to Miami. However the incoming Chair of the House Transportation Committee has already spoken out against it.

On the other hand the fate of the investment in a high-speed link in California has not been changed by the election. The backbone of that system, the 500 miles from LA to San Francisco is planned for completion by 2020. (video here). The discussion is more about where the construction will start.

Current and future Saudi and Russian oil production

One of the inexorable results of the developing shortage of oil is that prices will rise. It is a prospect that does not particularly concern the Saudi Arabian Administration, Minister Al-Naimi having recently inflated the acceptable range for crude up to $90 a barrel, and JP Morgan has recently predicted an imminent rise to $100, a theme apparently now also taken up by Libya. Higher oil costs lead to higher fuel bills, and there is already a report in the United Kingdom that, in consequence , there may already be an increase in winter deaths.

Because demand for imported oil in countries such as China and India continues to increase at a steady rate, it will only be through the increase in production from the exporting nations that supply can meet such demand, and prices can be held at a relatively stable level.

Chinese changes in oil flows (Energy Export Databrowser )

Indian changes in oil flows (Energy Export Databrowser )

The two plots above are only illustrative of the problem, given that the volumes and relative import/export flows change around the world continuously. However, the world’s two largest producers of oil are Saudi Arabia and Russia.

Given the likely continued increase in the world thirst for oil it is worth reviewing again the potential for increased exports from these two countries. The first is Saudi Arabia, whose oil Minister I quoted at the beginning of this piece.

Saudi Arabian changes in oil flows (Energy Export Databrowser )

While it is likely that a significant proportion of the oil export drop in 2009 was due to the world recession, the steady rise of the black line, that showing internal consumption, is also contributing to a reduced volume available for export. That rise is perhaps better illustrated with a plot from The Oilwatch Monthly for August.


Whether Saudi Arabia will increase production, and if so by how much, is now one of the more interesting questions for 2011. They have indicated that they are increasingly more concerned with maintaining the long term potential for higher ultimate yield, which requires lower daily production rates, and have already cut their maximum planned production rate to 12 mbd in consequence. If they do not increase flows significantly, then the focus swings to Russia.

Only today Russia was announcing that production had reached a new record of 10.26 mbd for October. The gain was achieved with increased production from Sakhalin Island, and oil exports increased to 4.97 mbd. Whether this level can be sustained, however, remains a critical question.

Russian changes in oil flows (Energy Export Databrowser )

President Putin has noted that it will take $280 billion in investment to stop a 20% fall in production over the next 10 years, and that investment will only hold production at current levels. Russian consumption has also been relatively flat over the last decade, and one has to wonder if that will continue, given the flow of money into the economy that the sale of the oil is bringing. The increased funding has already stopped the decline in oil production in the country that had been forecast only a year ago. Production is coming from the relatively new fields such as Vankor (270 kbd), South Khylchuyu, Verkhnechonskoye (51 kbd), Uvat (78 kbd) . However production from these fields has been manipulated a little, apparently, by attempts to find helpful tax breaks. Production at South Khylchuyu being a current victim of that, since the field has a potential of 150 kbd, and started at 80 kbd. That production is now all slated to go to China and China has also funded a loan for pipeline construction to Vankor, scheduled to be completed next year, that will carry that production (scheduled to peak at 510 kbd in 2014) to China. Current Vankor production is about 10% above that anticipated last year, but with that gain going to China, and overall production being about level, this suggests that the declines in production from older fields will increasingly hurt exports to the West.

"Vankor say they will do 250,000 bpd next year, but unless you're bringing on very sizeable fields every year, the five percent decline rate in western Siberia will take that out," said Russian oil analyst Oswald Clint of Sanford Bernstein. (last year).

Clearly the current prices of oil are helping to justify the increased production practices from Russia, and their investment in maximizing production.

I am, however, drawn to remember Jonathan Callahan’s presentation at the ASPO meeting. Because that is not yet up on the ASPO site I am going to include my review of it, as it drew the same conclusion as I. The bit that is important is the contrast between the British way of developing their oil reserve, and that of the Dutch.

Jonathan used representative plots from the series for his talk, beginning with the UK.


Noting that the UK used town gas (made from coal) until 1959, when the first LNG was imported from LA, gas in the UK was privatized in 1986 and reached peak production in 2000, becoming a net importer of natural gas in 2004. This last winter it was necessary, on three occasions for the National Grid to issue “Gas Balancing Alerts”, where industrial consumers should reduce use to protect domestic consumers. The situation is anticipated to get worse.

He contrasted this way of managing a resource with that of the Dutch, who have the large Groningen Gas field but which they have managed in a much more conservative way. With their different management philosophy they have retained a considerable margin for the future, over the same time interval.

I would suggest that we are increasingly seeing the Russians follow the British model, while the Saudi’s are moving toward the Dutch model. Such changes will likely impact future supplies.

(And if you think this is sort of a commercial for the upcoming Tech Talk switch you might not be wrong).