Husky Energy Expectations To Be Able To Faucet New Kind Of Oil-Sands Reservoir

Husky Energy (HSE-T25.850.401.57%) Inc. is drilling test wells into a new type of oil resource that holds promise as a major source of Alberta crude, if it can be profitably exploited.

On Monday, the company revealed a new estimate suggesting it might one day be able to pull as much as 10 billion barrels of oil from a relatively new type of reservoir on its oil sands properties. The vast pool is contained in the so-called carbonates, which are limestone rocks that contain crude, but which have so far resisted efforts at commercial production.

This Blog is brought to you by Geothermal Atlanta by Premier Indoor. Provides ground source heat pumps (GSHP) that heat and cool your homes and offices using green technology. Our system draws energy from the ground and cuts down your energy bill!        

The Amount Energy Really Does GHD Hair Straighteners Utilize?

Its been a while since we added products to our how much energy does section, and the first product of 2009 is for the fashionista's out there. GHD hair straighteners, are an item many can not live without, where ever they are in the world. Not only are they an essential, its a serious emergency should your bags get lost. But is this little gadget drawing enough energy to cause climate change?

Well we tested standard GHD straighteners (model ghd3) over a five minutes, the typical hair straightening time frame for medium length hair.

Initially, for the first minute of use from cold, the straighteners reached 300W, then as they warmed to temperature, this reduced to 120W, for the remainder of their use during the trial period they drew between 55W and 106W, with an average of approximately 79W.

Over the five minute period that the straighteners were used, they drew an average of 123W. This would equate to 1.6p an hour, or 0.13p per use. This equates to 56.7g of CO2 per hour use and 4.72g of CO2 per use (of five minutes).

But don't forget to switch them off or not only will they burn a hole in your work surface, maybe your pocket and the environment too.

For information on the electricity consumption of other products check out "How Much Electricity Does a ... Use?"

Please Note the energy use figures are taken from an energy monitor and are not scientifically analysed, therefore the range and margin of error is greater. If you would like a specific product tested let us know and we will endeavour to check it out.

This Blog is brought to you by Geothermal Atlanta by Premier Indoor. Provides ground source heat pumps (GSHP) that heat and cool your homes and offices using green technology. Our system draws energy from the ground and cuts down your energy bill!       

Our Moving Power Diet regime

It's fairly easy to agree on the desirability of shifting our energy diet away from fossil fuels and toward more renewable or sustainable sources, but it's much harder to agree on the time scale involved. While recognizing the great potential of renewable energy technologies such as wind, solar and geothermal power, along with advanced, non-food-based biofuels, I am convinced that the transition will take much longer than many hope--longer than many will have patience for, in light of pressing concerns about energy security and the environment. When considering future shifts in our energy diet, it's instructive to review some of the changes we've already experienced, and how long they took. The graph below displays the relative contribution of America's main energy sources since 1949, based on data from the Energy Information Agency of the US Department of Energy.

This chart, which compares the proportional, rather than absolute contribution of each source as a percent of the total, shows that the US energy diet has experienced constant change over the last seven decades. Some of these changes have been dramatic, such as the erosion of coal's market share in the 1950s and '60s by oil and natural gas, while others, such as the resurgence of biomass-based energy since the 1970s are less dramatic but still noticeable. On the scale of this graph the non-biomass renewables that I've lumped together appear relatively steady, because the recent rapid growth of wind and solar energy has so far only compensated for a contemporaneous decline in hydropower output. I'd expect the growth of that green segment to be more obvious in a few years, though still not on the scale of nuclear power.

The chart also reminds us that however prominent a given energy source might have become during this period, none overwhelmed the others. We talk a great deal about oil's dominance, yet it never exceeded a 48% share of our energy diet, and it has recently fallen below 37%. In fact, you'd have to go all the way back to the 1920s to find an energy source with a market share above 60%, which coal still enjoyed during the early years of oil's rise as the combination of mass-produced cars and the big oil finds in East Texas and Oklahoma upended the US energy landscape. That's one reason I generally find forecasts of renewables capturing 80% of the energy market within a few decades to be improbable.

Perhaps the most relevant example for renewables of a disruptive energy technology capturing a significant share of the market is commercial nuclear power, which contributed just 0.1% of US energy in 1962. That's about what solar provides today. Yet even with a major push by utilities and government and broadly favorable market acceptance until after the Three Mile Island accident, it still took nuclear power 25 years to reach a 6% share of total US primary energy, and nearly 40 years to reach its current 8% or so. Today's renewables also face similar limits on their potential market penetration, albeit due to very different factors relating to intermittency and the high cost of energy storage.

What would it take for renewables to repeat the model of oil's success against coal? In the absence of a high carbon price or incentives on a level unlikely to be either politically feasible or affordable in the current environment, I believe it would require technologies that don't just reduce greenhouse gas emissions or local pollutants, but actually enable something new and very attractive to consumers and businesses, along the lines of the quantum leaps in mobility and other economic activity that oil made possible. Otherwise, their promoters should be prepared to play a long game, in much the same way that the conventional energy industry did when it was building its market post World War II. Do investors and policy makers have the patience that requires?

By the way The Energy Collective is offering a free virtual conference on November 30 on the subject of "How to Save A Planet on A Budget." The conference includes panel discussions and case studies moderated by Marc Gunther of Fortune magazine, Jesse Jenkins of the Breakthrough Institute, and Gernot Wagner, economist at the Environmental Defense Fund.

This Blog is brought to you by Geothermal Atlanta by Premier Indoor. Provides ground source heat pumps (GSHP) that heat and cool your homes and offices using green technology. Our system draws energy from the ground and cuts down your energy bill!      

Don’t Wager With a Large Tumble Within Oil - Even With Any Slowdown

With debt crises either side of the Atlantic, Europe flirting with recession and Libyan oil fields returning to production, it is tempting to be bearish on oil.

Tempting but risky.

Despite all the financial and economic gloom, 2011 has been a record year for oil with Brent crude at its highest-ever average above $110 (U.S.) per barrel, and few analysts forecast a big drop in price, even those who expect an economic slowdown.

Rising demand for fuel from China and other emerging economies, declining output from traditional suppliers including the North Sea and interruptions to production in key exporters such as Libya have kept the oil market tight.

And unless the United States, the world’s biggest oil consumer, slips into a double-dip recession, oil prices are likely to stay strong, at least until the end of the northern-hemisphere winter.

“Pessimistic scenarios for oil have not been realized,” said Harry Tchilinguirian, head of commodity market strategy at French bank BNP Paribas. “World oil demand is growing and, if supplies don’t increase, either inventories have to fall or prices rise: both have been happening.”

Global oil demand is likely to have increased by about 900,000 barrels per day (bpd) this year to more than 89 million bpd, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA), which advises major industrialized economies on energy policy.

Next year, world demand for oil will rise even faster, by about 1.3 million bpd, the IEA forecasts, as China, India, Brazil and other emerging economies all use more.

Inconsistent supply
“While headlines are full of ... the spectre of recession, it is easy to overlook the fact that oil demand has resumed its growth path and 2011 levels are the highest in history,” said David Wech, head of energy studies at consultancy JBC Energy.

While demand has increased, supply has been inconsistent, with the uprising against former dictator Muammar Gaddafi removing up to 1.6 million bpd of high quality Libyan oil this year and hiccups in production in Russia, Britain, Norway and Nigeria.

Other factors are also supporting oil.

Despite low levels of consumer confidence, U.S. economic data has consistently out-performed forecasts over the last quarter, bolstering U.S. crude for the last two months.

As the United States moves into an election year, there are widespread expectations that the U.S. Federal Reserve will launch a new round of monetary easing in an attempt to buoy the U.S. economy and increase employment. In the past, such moves have led to rallies in asset prices, particularly oil.

Economists say it would take a significant fall in economic growth to dent oil demand and tip the balance in the oil market towards surplus. And as even more conservative forecasts see global growth around 3 per cent, that looks very unlikely.

‘Fear’
If oil prices did start to decline, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) would be likely to step in to curb output, as it did in 2008 during the depths of the financial crisis, analysts say.

If necessary, key OPEC members such as Saudi Arabia are likely to accommodate the resumption of Libyan oil exports by trimming their own production, analysts say.

This is even more likely given the rising cost of production for OPEC members in the Middle East Gulf, which analysts at Deutsche Bank now estimate as high as $86.50 (U.S.) per barrel.

If prices were to approach that level, pressure to reduce output and deliveries to the market would intensify greatly.

Many analysts see the chance of modest falls in oil prices if economic activity in Europe is hit hard by the euro zone debt crisis, but even the lowest forecasts are relatively high.

In the most recent Reuters oil price poll, only two of 35 analysts predicted Brent would slip below $90 per barrel next year and the average forecast was that prices would be close to where they are now, around $106 per barrel.

Goldman Sachs, the most accurate oil price forecaster over the last year, now sees Brent at $125 per barrel in 12 months.

Amrita Sen, oil analyst at Barclays Capital, argues the oil market is caught between competing and intensifying influences.

Outside the oil market, the possibility of a major economic failure has grown, but inside the market, spare capacity has eroded and physical market strength has increased, she said: “In our view, it is only the fear of macroeconomic discontinuities that is keeping a lid on oil prices. Without that fear, we believe that Brent would have already reached an all-time high and climbed past $150 per barrel.”

This Blog is brought to you by Geothermal Atlanta by Premier Indoor. Provides ground source heat pumps (GSHP) that heat and cool your homes and offices using green technology. Our system draws energy from the ground and cuts down your energy bill!