RE: Energy Policy

> -----Original Message-----
> From: asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu [mailto:asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu]On
> Behalf Of Gary Collins
> Sent: Wednesday, December 17, 2003 8:14 AM
> I haven't been following this thread very closely,
> but I happened to notice this article in the news
> yesterday:
> "New hydrogen buses hit the road"
> http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/3323527.stm
>
> It all looks very encouraging, but like many things
> seems to have its 'small print'. In this case, the caption
> to the final figure, which indicates that the hydrogen
> is 'sourced from natural gas' (!)
>
> So apparently in the short term it is not quite as good
> as it seems, but at least a step in the right direction.
> (Is it cheaper to source hydrogen from natural gas
> than it would be from water? )

Yes, because to source it from water one must generate electricity.
Something like 40% of the world's electricity comes from natural gas; 42%
comes from coal. Large quantities of heat energy are lost in that
conversion process. Neither source for hydrogen looks good over the long
term. The spike in natural gas prices yesterday to above $6 per million
cubic feet is due to the fact that the natural gas supply has not been
keeping up with demand. I saw on the news today that some industrial
consumers are wanting to investigate. The simple fact is that by drilling
as fast as we can, we are barely increasing the Natural gas supply. Matt
Simmons, an oil investment banker said this:

"Our firm a year ago conducted a very intensive analysis of what was
happening to the natural gas supply in Texas by examining the detailed
records of the Texas Drill Commission from 50% of the state's production in
53 counties. What we found was amazing. What we found was that in this 53
county area (this is 16% of the U.S. gas supply) the wells drilled in 2001,
2400 wells out of 37,000 wells that are in production created 30% of the
total supply, and it turns out that 7% of these 2400 wells, 167 wells,
created 49% of the supply and the other 93% of the wells created the
remaining 51%. These giant 167 gas wells - a year later, we went back and
tested their January 03 production; they had suffered a decline across the
board of an average of 82% in a year, so wells do decline rapidly these
days" http://www.peakoil.net/iwood2003/MatSim.html

We actually have had periods where rig count doubled but production only
went up 1-2%! The gas isn't out there in North America.
Received on Wed Dec 17 07:24:29 2003