ENER "The Third World comes to Texas" Karl Denninger explains the TARFU there

[MinnesotaSmith]

From Vox Day's site:

Vox Popoli: The Third World comes to Texas

voxday.blogspot.com

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 18, 2021
The Third World comes to Texas

"Karl Denninger explains what happened and why it's not going to get better any time soon:"

===============================================

"The Bidens and AOCs of the world are literally going to kill you.
You're seeing it right here and now across the nation, including in Texas.
Texas, like so many other areas, has put up windmills and solar "farms" for the last 20 years, shutting down older coal-fired plants and not modernizing and improving their "fossil fuel" energy production infrastructure. At the same time on a national basis the natural gas pipeline operators, in service to the woke green mob, have replaced fuel-fired pumps (that run on the gas in the pipe, therefore are failsafe so long as the pipe has something in it and is intact) with electrically powered booster pumps because, of course, you can get the power for them from "green" sources instead of all that eeee-vile carbon.

I remind you that natural gas does not freeze at other than cryogenic temperatures and as such the problem is not the gas freezing and as for machinery you have plenty of heat source in the pipe. By putting up with and responding to the "woke mob" instead of immediately frying and eating their entire blood line these companies took an ultra-reliable and essential energy delivery system that other than by physical destruction would nearly-always continue to operate and turned it into a fragile system dependent on multiple outside elements where if any of those elements failed so does the natural gas delivery.

Winter in the south is when nuclear plants are typically taken down for maintenance as well -- since it's the middle of summer when the A/C is blasting away. But those NatGas peaking plants and coal-fired base load infrastructure, well.... it's not green enough, so let's turn that stuff off and rely on the windmills and solar panels -- and hope it doesn't get destabilized.

Of course the "Globull Warming" screamfest folks always and forever have prognosticated that it will forever get warmer, that wind levels will rise forever and thus both solar panels and wind will forevermore continue to yield more and more useful energy.

All of that got blown up this week.

Texas is seeing wind chills in negative (Fahrenheit) numbers along with single digit or below temperatures. That plus moisture = ice, and windmill blades are wings and not only suffer the same problem an airplane wing does when it gets loaded in addition they go out of balance and thus the windmill has to be shut down lest it destroy itself.

At the same time ice and snow cover solar panels and reduce their output to an effective zero.

The problem with the power grid is that in the event you demand more of it than can be delivered it becomes unstable due to a number of factors including, in the case of A/C transmission, phase sag. If expected resources are not available -- such as when your wind turbines ice up -- then you have no alternative but to shed load (turn off people's power intentionally) because if you don't you will get an uncontrolled collapse and possible severe equipment damage. Further most nuclear plants cannot quickly load-follow -- if you need more power quickly you better have something else, and if a bunch of load drops off rapidly you better have some other generation source you can shut down. Go outside the operating parameters and a nuke plant will "trip" and if they do most of them cannot immediately restart due to a phenomena called "xenon poisoning"; if the fuel has some age on it you must wait until that bleeds off because the core does not have enough reactivity to go critical until it does, which can take a couple of days or even more.
That's exactly what happened."

================================================

"I know it's serious. I know a lot of people are enduring things that are very difficult. But, I have to admit, as a survivor of some of Minnesota's coldest-ever winters, it's hard not to be just a little bemused by people prophesying doom on the basis of "temperatures expected to drop to as low as 11F in Houston and 9F in San Antonio."

I mean, in 1983, I once waited 30 minutes for a bus in -40F windchill temperature. They didn't even cancel school! So, if you want some advice from a genuine Zero Hero:

• Layers. Always layers. It's nearly impossible to be cold with five layers. T-shirt, turtleneck, sweater, windbreaker, parka, especially if you move at all.
• Mittens are better than gloves. Fur-lined mittens are better than regular mittens.
• Wet feet freeze. Three layers of socks are best. First the thin silver socks, then regular socks, then thick socks. Moon Boots rock.
• Hat and facemask works best. A scarf is good because you can cover your face with it if you don't have a mask. That being said, I never wore a scarf.
• Back to the wind. Always keep your back to the wind as much as possible.
• Snow is warm. Use it to build windblocks."

 

[Profit of Doom]

Back to the wind. Always keep your back to the wind as much as possible.

When walking barefoot to school in the snow, be sure to walk uphill. Both ways. Pregnant.

 

[bw]

Karl Denninger explains the TARFU there

Second acronym today I had to look up. I could suss a part of it.

 

[Double_A]

California in it's infinite stupidity over the last ten years has decommissioned 6 clean natural gas fired electric plants and replace them with "nothing yet"

So now we have to beg to buy electricity from out of state during the evening and night...at really high prices.

But there is something to rejoice! We are ahead of schedule for decommissioning fossil fuel Electric plants.

Dumb asses

 

[Meadowlark]

Second acronym today I had to look up. I could suss a part of it.

Remember the acronyms SNAFU, TARFU, FUBAR and BOHICA.

 

[Hognutz]

So I take it they replaced the pumps that used the gas from the line itself with electric pumps that are dependent on the lines staying up...

Morons, and yep Karl is right, they are gonna get us killed...

 

[Walrus]

Denninger is smart but he doesn't know the oil & gas bidness like he does financial stuff, except for what he can read in Wikipedia or something, and I guess he thinks that makes him an acknowledged expert. It does, actually, compared to most folks who depend on Twatter for their information.

Let's first put to bed the statement about natural gas not freezing.

Natural gas (depending on its particular makeup of hydrocarbon molecules but let's assume it's a "typical" random mixture of methane, ethane, propane, pentane, butane and a host of other 'anes which are only used as memorization ouchies in organic chem classes) freezes at cryogenic temperatures, that's true, but only if it's been first cleaned of its impurities. Cryogenic temperatures, by the way, are defined as very cold temps that begin at 120° Kelvin or -153° Celsius.

Only natural gas which is slated to become LPG (Liquified Petroleum Gas or what we commonly know as propane) goes through a cryo plant for the most part; the rest is generally run through some wellsite scrubbers and knockout pots and then heads on its merry way through the system while not being completely cleansed of its normal contaminants.

These contaminants can consist of almost anything but are commonly corrosive or poisonous gases such as carbon dioxide, hydrogen sulfide, etc. along with any number of light hydrocarbons such as condensates (drip gas) but almost always include water. Some of the water was injected by us if the well needed fracture stimulation but older, unstimulated wells produce in situ water - water that was hanging out in the reservoir rocks along with the hydrocarbons.

This isn't nice drinkable water. This is sour, nasty, smelly salty water which ain't good for nuttin' and it's getting to be more and more prevalent as old gas wells "water out". Disposal is usually done via transport to disposal wells which inject the water into a handy subsurface formation.

Anyways, it's these contaminants - particularly the water - which freeze in the wellheads and in the pipelines. Hydrates - frozen gas crystals which begin forming at around normal freezing temperatures for water but again that depends on the pressure and velocity they're moving at - form very quickly and are the main culprits responsible for gas systems freezing. People might think that anti-freeze (ethylene glycol) will work to thaw out these hydrates but that will only prevent systems from freezing at certain temperatures. Methanol (besides ambient heat when things warm back up) is the only thing which will dissolve hydrates once they've formed and methanol is a nasty substance in its own right for people to handle.

These contaminants also are what wear out pipelines. Most old pipelines which begin to leak have a trough at the bottom where water has been traveling along the gas for years, until it wears holes through the steel. There are alloys which are resistant to corrosive gases - for well tubulars, pipelines and handling plants - but the costs are astronomical compared to normal-usage tubulars.

Holding a handful of hydrates is kinda cool ... they just sort of fizz away until there's nothing left but the moisture which was what the hydrates crystals formed around.

It's not easy teaching petroleum engineering in a few paragraphs because it's an incredibly complex business which isn't easily condensed down into Twitter-digestible bits or even simple answers. Most problems are technically resolvable but that inevitable bugaboo named economics usually provides the brick wall for many of them.

ETA: All this can be explained mathematically but maths is hard. Forgive me for saying that, granny mole, and come back to whack me over the head for that one!

 

[Profit of Doom]

The impossibility of replacing fossil fuel with renewables

https://www.timebomb2000.com/xf/index.php?threads/bright-green-impossibilities.596005/

 

[mikeabn]

When walking barefoot to school in the snow, be sure to walk uphill. Both ways. Pregnant.

While being stalked by wolves.

 

[BornFree]

Denninger is smart but he doesn't know the oil & gas bidness like he does financial stuff, except for what he can read in Wikipedia or something, and I guess he thinks that makes him an acknowledged expert. It does, actually, compared to most folks who depend on Twatter for their information.

Let's first put to bed the statement about natural gas not freezing.

Natural gas (depending on its particular makeup of hydrocarbon molecules but let's assume it's a "typical" random mixture of methane, ethane, propane, pentane, butane and a host of other 'anes which are only used as memorization ouchies in organic chem classes) freezes at cryogenic temperatures, that's true, but only if it's been first cleaned of its impurities. Cryogenic temperatures, by the way, are defined as very cold temps that begin at 120° Kelvin or -153° Celsius.

Only natural gas which is slated to become LPG (Liquified Petroleum Gas or what we commonly know as propane) goes through a cryo plant for the most part; the rest is generally run through some wellsite scrubbers and knockout pots and then heads on its merry way through the system while not being completely cleansed of its normal contaminants.

These contaminants can consist of almost anything but are commonly corrosive or poisonous gases such as carbon dioxide, hydrogen sulfide, etc. along with any number of light hydrocarbons such as condensates (drip gas) but almost always include water. Some of the water was injected by us if the well needed fracture stimulation but older, unstimulated wells produce in situ water - water that was hanging out in the reservoir rocks along with the hydrocarbons.

This isn't nice drinkable water. This is sour, nasty, smelly salty water which ain't good for nuttin' and it's getting to be more and more prevalent as old gas wells "water out". Disposal is usually done via transport to disposal wells which inject the water into a handy subsurface formation.

Anyways, it's these contaminants - particularly the water - which freeze in the wellheads and in the pipelines. Hydrates - frozen gas crystals which begin forming at around normal freezing temperatures for water but again that depends on the pressure and velocity they're moving at - form very quickly and are the main culprits responsible for gas systems freezing. People might think that anti-freeze (ethylene glycol) will work to thaw out these hydrates but that will only prevent systems from freezing at certain temperatures. Methanol (besides ambient heat when things warm back up) is the only thing which will dissolve hydrates once they've formed and methanol is a nasty substance in its own right for people to handle.

These contaminants also are what wear out pipelines. Most old pipelines which begin to leak have a trough at the bottom where water has been traveling along the gas for years, until it wears holes through the steel. There are alloys which are resistant to corrosive gases - for well tubulars, pipelines and handling plants - but the costs are astronomical compared to normal-usage tubulars.

Holding a handful of hydrates is kinda cool ... they just sort of fizz away until there's nothing left but the moisture which was what the hydrates crystals formed around.

It's not easy teaching petroleum engineering in a few paragraphs because it's an incredibly complex business which isn't easily condensed down into Twitter-digestible bits or even simple answers. Most problems are technically resolvable but that inevitable bugaboo named economics usually provides the brick wall for many of them.

ETA: All this can be explained mathematically but maths is hard. Forgive me for saying that, granny mole, and come back to whack me over the head for that one!

You sound like you know what you are talking about. My impression is that the problem in Texas is that gas is coming directly from the well head. Therefore it contains those impurities such as water that create a huge problem in freezing temps. But places in the north never have a problem with NG freezing. Even in major subzero temps. Therefore I assume that their gas which is delivered has been cleaned at least of moisture content. I would recommend that Texas store some treated NG that they can switch to when it gets cold out. Then they can temporarily shut down their wells.

 

[Walrus]

Thanks, I guess something should finally sink into this thick skull after 45 years of fooling around in that business.

What you mention (storage) is correct. That's one possible solution; of course it's been implemented for years as there are trillions of cubic feet of gas in storage underground (natural reservoirs which may be miles wide in diameter), which has been injected into anticlinal domes for surges of usage during wintertime. The gas which then gets brought up from those storage reservoirs still will have some contaminants but not as many as gas directly from a well. The reality of it is, however, is that demand is so strong during the winter that the wells themselves still cannot be shut down, even accounting for increased deliverability from gas storage.

You're right that the NG up north is treated differently to account for the difference in "typical" climactic conditions. It has to be in order for the system to work. Depending on the intensity of the weather conditions, there may or may not be chemical injection involved as well, such as glycol, methanol or some other chemical of which I'm unaware. (Midstream companies - pipelines - have their own organizations, systems and protocols in place and I'm just not near as well-versed in them as I am in the upstream portfolio) Again, the issue is economics. A problem of this magnitude in the country's major producing area just simply hasn't been experienced before, even considering the harsh winters of the 50s. History hasn't been a good guide in this instance, has it?

I haven't even touched on the idea of gas flaring, which has routinely been done 24 hours a day for decades of what is considered uneconomic gas. The problem there again is economics as capturing that flared gas at the wellsites would involve a tremendous increase in infrastructure - read: pipelines. There's a lot of gas flaring in the country from Texas through the Rockies to North Dakota, and that doesn't even include the tremendous amount of gas which is flared offshore from the Gulf of Mexico (or from Mexico itself, by the way). All the government cares about - in the case of federal or state leases - is that the amount of flared gas is tracked so royalties can be paid on it. That's cheaper than building pipelines to capture that gas into the system.

For another chart which is awfully illustrative, look at how natural gas is being forced to be the swing/surge producer in Texas to replace the lag times when green energy can't do what it's touted to do. Moral of the story: any green energy system has to have 100% fossil fuel or nuclear redundancy because it's only intermittent.

 

[Thunderdragon]

I enjoy reading karl as he is a good writer and offers some interesting takes. On the other hand...if you followed his bearish views on the stock market for the past 20 years you would be broke And missed the biggest bull market in history. i agree that things have looked bleak economically...but I guess you cannot underestimate the impact of massive government induced spending resulting in inflation of most assets.

 

[Meadowlark]

Gas wells seldom last more than five years before being capped because they are so corrosive. Its not just the co2 and h2s and water, its the buildup of acidic hydrocarbons that accumulate near the wellhead as condensation. Not to mention the trace amounts of mercury.

 

[Blacknarwhal]

I enjoy reading karl as he is a good writer and offers some interesting takes. On the other hand...if you followed his bearish views on the stock market for the past 20 years you would be broke And missed the biggest bull market in history. i agree that things have looked bleak economically...but I guess you cannot underestimate the impact of massive government induced spending resulting in inflation of most assets.

Remember how he spent years being clinically unable to shut up about "happy motoring"? Man was CONVINCED we were at peak oil. Then prices dropped, and kept dropping, for years.

Happy motoring!

 

[Doc1]

Denninger's a smart guy, but he, you, me and no one on this Earth is right about everything all the time. The best we can hope to do is be mostly right, some of the time. Even the most logical constructs often implode because we live amongst illogical - and unpredictable - people.

Our Texas example illustrates nothing so much as the foolishness of putting all your eggs in one basket and worse, having that basket woven with political straw.

The whole "green energy" and "ecology" political constructs are erroneous, politically-correct, virtue-signalling farces.

Remember Obama's "Cash For Clunkers" program? The idea was - supposedly - to get less efficient, polluting vehicles off the road and encourage people to buy newer models. Great, right? Well, in reality, not so great (for a multitude of reasons). The single greatest example of flawed thinking in the program was that it didn't take into account all of the energy and pollution - starting with the extracting and processing of raw materials - required to produce the older vehicles in the first place. If conservation was truly the goal, extending the life of the older vehicles would have been far wiser.

But that doesn't score anyone SJW brownie points. The Left excells at nothing so much as destroying things.

Most people today tend to live in urban hives, relying on centralized systems. This is the Left's wet dream. When things are normal this usually works out fairly well. When they aren't - as we've seen in Texas - the implosion is much worse than if people were at least partially independent and had their own water, sewerage and electricity production facilities.

The myth of the "Independent Texas Spirit" is just that, a myth. I'm not picking on Texans; this is true - mostly - across the country.

I feel sorry for the Texans who've recently been freezing in the dark, except for the Green, SJW Texans. They deserved it!

Best
Doc

 

[raven]

Denninger's a smart guy, but he, you, me and no one on this Earth is right about everything all the time. The best we can hope to do is be mostly right, some of the time. Even the most logical constructs often implode because we live amongst illogical - and unpredictable - people.

Or Texas example illustrates nothing so much as the foolishness of putting all your eggs in one basket and worse, having that basket woven with political straw.

The whole "green energy" and "ecology" political constructs are erroneous, politically-correct, virtue-signalling farces.

Remember Obama's "Cash For Clunkers" program? The idea was - supposedly - to get less efficient, polluting vehicles off the road and encourage people to buy newer models. Great, right? Well, in reality, not so great (for a multitude of reasons). The single greatest example of flawed thinking in the program was that it didn't take into account all of the energy and pollution - starting with the extracting and processing of raw materials - required to produce the older vehicles in the first place. If conservation was truly the goal, extending the life of the older vehicles would have been far wiser.

But that doesn't score anyone SJW brownie points. The Left excells at nothing so much as destroying things.

Most people today tend to live in urban hives, relying on centralized systems. This is the Left's wet dream. When things are normal this usually works out fairly well. When they aren't - as we've seen in Texas - the implosion is much worse than if people were at least partially independent and had their own water, sewerage and electricity production facilities.

The myth of the "Independent Texas Spirit" is just that, a myth. I'm not picking on Texans; this is true - mostly - across the country.

I feel sorry for the Texans who've recently been freezing in the dark, except for the Green, SJW Texans. They deserved it!

Best
Doc

there is an independent texas spirit.
my cousin was one. he passed last year. age 66-a year older than me. he always did things his was. was arrogant. a perfectionist. gambler and drank too much.
he died in Bolivia because Texas fenced him in too much.
mom was one. lived through the depression. widowed in early thirties with 4 kids-and we were terrors. remarried smart, worked into her 60s.
I might be . . . maybe not . . . that would be for someone else to say.
but I have siblings and cousins, born in Texas, who don't have that Texas Spirit.
and most of the people you will meet in Texas today are not from there

 

[Millwright]

There are gas wells all around here.

When it gets this cold, you see guys pulling trailers with 500g water tanks and steam cleaners mounted.

They run around thawing wellheads.

Not sure of the particulars tho.

 

[Seeker22]

The whole "green energy" and "ecology" political constructs are erroneous, politically-correct, virtue-signalling farces

When I was taking my Geology Minor in the early '90s, I figured out all those fancy words were boiled down to just one- communist.

 

[Walrus]

When I was taking my Geology Minor in the early '90s, I figured out all those fancy words were boiled down to just one- communist.

Watermelons, Madame Seeker: green on the outside and red on the inside.

 

[Walrus]

Latest comment from my engineering buddy who's been digging into this as deeply as he can (from the outside) is illustrative but gives some more insight as to possible pathways the inevitable incident report should pursue. If these details don't come out, you'll know the whitewash is well under way:

Well, well. Seems we have found what accounts for a good portion of the gas shortage and related electricity shortage.

Seems the power grid managers killed power to gas compressor stations to save electricity. Can't have those big compressor motors running you know. Same for every electric unit in the field. There was a day when it would not have mattered about electricity since the oilfield ran on Ajax, LeRoi, Ingersoll and Waukesha and nobody complained about the noise.

Kind of hard to get gas delivered to power plants when the power company shuts down the compressor stations eh wot? The engines he was talking about are the ones which were used to power wellsite compressors and pump stations instead of running electrical lines all over the place; they would typically run off of fuel gas if there was enough available from the inline scrubber. That was a no-brainer to switch to cheaper electric motors if there was available electricity close by, though.

He left out the old poppety-popping single-piston Listers from his list but I won't quibble.

 

[bobfall2005]

Clearly, Ted Cruz is to blame.

 

[Doomer Doug]

Oregon just shut down its last coal fired power plant last year. Which may explain why 10 percent of Oregon's 4 million people, some 400,000 or so lost power last week, and still don't have it. Oregon went green heavy.
The scope of the political leadership's failure in meeting multiple crisis over the last 18 months boggles my mind.

 

[mikeabn]

There have been so MANY failures, so many things that defy logic, so many blatant in-your-face lies, all of which lead to the inevitable conclusion that, "they hate us and want us dead. "