The Oil Drum: Australia/New Zealand

This is the final piece of a series on Energy Return on Investment from Professor Charles Hall's EROI Workshop at SUNY. Today's papers outline the energy technologies of wave and geothermal power, concluding a 5 part series that has looked at Why EROI Matters, Natural Gas and Imported Oil, Tar Sands and Shale Oil, Nuclear Power, and Passive Solar, Photovoltaic, Wind, and Hydro-electric. Previously, Professor Hall also wrote the thought provoking, At $100 Oil, What Can the Scientist Say to the Investor. Forget not about the simple 'balloon graph' below of EROI x Scale for fossil and renewable energy sources that this project is attempting to update with the help of theoildrum.com readership.

The 7:30 report on the ABC had a segment yesterday on the impact of the Garnaut report on two Cooper basin projects - GeoDynamics' HFR geothermal power experiment (covered before in Geothermia) and Santos' proposal to use carbon dioxide injection into Cooper Basin oil and gas fields to enhance recovery rates - the Moomba Carbon Storage project (pdf).

GeoDynamics have also been in the news (The Australian) as it conducted flow tests over the weekend to determine if there is any pressure loss between the Habanero 1 and Habaenro 3 wells. The results are to be announced later this week. The company has also commenced drilling another test well, 9km from Habanero, to test the extent of hot granite rocks within the company's operating permits.

Crossposted from Peak Energy as the subject of geothermal power has cropped up in the comments a few times lately.

Australian geothermal energy company Geodynamics was an unusual subject of attention in the energy press last week, after cornerstone shareholder Origin Energy expanded their stake in their Cooper Basin hot rocks project, including Geodynamics' giant Lightning drilling rig, Australia's biggest onshore rig. Origin is hoping to leverage its experience in gas exploration, production and power generation and exposure to geothermal power generation in New Zealand.

I've been following the (slow) progress of this endeavour for a number of years now, as the field has the potential to supply a large amount of clean energy over a considerable period of time.

Geodynamics was floated on the stock exchange back in 2002 and has been drilling in the Cooper Basin ever since. Origin believes the company had the best potential of the various Australian geothermal prospects and that "geothermal energy will play an increasing role in the security the world's future for clean energy".

The company has been working towards tapping heat from granites buried up to 5km underground between Innamincka and Moomba to generate electricity. Geodynamics aims to bring in a pilot one megawatt generator at the site within 12 months. Further drilling should enable a decision in 2009 to invest in a 50 megawatt demonstration plant. If successful, that would be followed by a 500-megawatt plant operating by 2016.

This is an Energy and Environment Round-Up by ilargi.

As the tar sands royalties soap drags on, and we do have links to some really good articles on the topic, from Nature.org, Mother Jones, and many others, still, how could we not open with climate change, two days after Al Gore and the IPCC won the first ever Climate Change Nobel Prize, and Sheila Watt-Cloutier and James Hansen did not?

Everything that the winners stand for is rendered obsolete in one broad stroke by the article from New Scientist that we open with below. And that is the problem: the people who do the frontline work are snubbed, while the late arrivals get decorated. Yes, Gore raises awareness. But awareness of what, exactly?

And that’s not the only issue: both winners stand out for being repeatedly, if not incessantly, wrong on what they claim to be experts in, only to be corrected time and again by those they beat out for the award. Yes, it’s done, we know, and maybe we should just lower our standards, like everyone else. Problem with that is, we don’t trust there’s time left for any standards other than the real ones.

Well it was raining in Cork this morning, site of this week's ASPO conference, but by this afternoon it turned out to be somewhat nicer, and so I meandered over to the The Lifetime Lab where the evening welcome reception was to take place. (Irish descriptions tend to be “at the top of the road”, “meet in the City Center”, “within walking distance”, and so I wanted to be sure I got there). What those who showed up at the reception missed was that this is a recent addition to the Cork Landscape (open just over a year) and is a teaching tool for the community with several thousand school kids a year coming to learn about energy, the alternatives and the issues that will dominate their lives. The staff at the Lab were very kind, as well as informative about what they were doing with geothermal, as well as solar energy (20 sq m of panels on the roof) and, more to the point, took pity on a relatively geriatric case who took nearly an hour to make the “easy 20-minute” stroll out, and drove me back to the hotel.

I will leave each of you to write your own caption to the photo I thought most memorable from the reception. You should know, however, that the "victim" is Dr Campbell who was welcoming us to the reception, and yes the hawk was alive.

Drilling jobs scene bleak

Thousands of rig hands in Western Canada are waiting for callbacks from their drilling-company employers, but industry observers say the high Canadian dollar and a crash in the royalty trust and junior part of the oilpatch mean they could be idle for a long time.

While the drilling industry, which for years worked to build up its labour pool, is reluctant to talk in terms of outright layoffs because of the seasonal nature of its work, it's expected there will be almost 3,500 fewer roughneck positions this summer relative to last year, as the number of active rigs drops to 376, from 512 in 2006.

Major Loss Of Gas Reserves Seen If ExxonMobil Scraps Pipeline

ExxonMobil's possible move to scrap natural gas pipelines in Alaska and Canada could amount to the equivalent of losing all the country's production in the Gulf of Mexico, an energy analyst said Thursday.

"It's the biggest energy story of the year," said Andrew Weissman of FTI Consulting.

Although natural gas and gasoline prices fell on Thursday following a rise in supply, Weissman said the market has yet to weigh the implications of ExxonMobil's (XOM) decision to possibly back away from building the Mackenzie Valley pipeline in Canada.

ExxonMobil Chairman and CEO Rex Tillerson told reporters after the company's annual meeting Wednesday that the $16.2 billion price tag for the delayed Mackenzie Valley pipeline is too expensive without more government subsidies.

"We are now in a situation where it's not economic at current costs," Tillerson said in an article published by The Globe and Mail. "It may just be that the project is going to have to wait for a different cost environment."

World oil production has maxed out: Talisman

Talisman chief executive Jim Buckee has never been one to shy away from controversy.

An astrophysicist, Buckee was one of the first energy industry executives to challenge the precepts of global warming and the subsequent demonization of all greenhouse gas producers -- a position that earned him the ire of the environmental lobby.

An adventurer, he took his company into one of the most controversial oil plays in the world -- Sudan -- believing it was a good thing, financially speaking, for the Calgary-based explorer. Some industry analysts believe that decision earned the company a stock market backlash, even though Talisman exited Sudan with a healthy financial gain over four years ago.

So when Buckee suggests, as he did at Talisman's annual meeting Wednesday, that Peak Oil has arrived, we are not completely surprised -- even if that observation is likely to again land him in the eye of a storm.

Q&A: EU energy proposals

The European Commission says climate change is the biggest challenge facing the world and the EU's top international priority. It has published a number of policy papers calling for major reductions in the EU's greenhouse gas emissions in coming decades, and emphasising the importance of nuclear power, clean coal technology, renewable energy, biofuels and increased energy efficiency.

Europe diary: Energy revolution

BBC Europe editor Mark Mardell discusses the EU's blueprint for a greener future, and how the winds of change are blowing through Europe's old industries.