David Fuller and Eoin Treacy's Comment of the Day
Category - Energy

    12 frightful slides before Halloween: Stocks boil and bubble, investors toil and trouble

    Thanks to a subscriber for this report from Stifel which contains a number of insightful charts and may be of interest. Here is a section:

    Bull Case for Chinese Commodities Enhanced by Stronger Yuan

    This article from Bloomberg may be of interest to subscribers. Here is a section:

    Elsewhere, Shanghai is taking steps to promote hydrogen vehicles, with a plan to get 10,000 cars on the road by 2023. Just this week, Sinopec has flagged its intention to include hydrogen in retail fuel stations, while top vehicle-maker SAIC Motor said it’s accelerating its push into the alternative energy source.

    And also in the news, Cargill has bought a new soy-processing plant in China as the nation’s pig herd recovers from the ravages of swine fever. Hog numbers expanded for the seventh consecutive month in August, signaling growing confidence among breeders, according to the farm ministry.

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    Desert Mountain Energy Announces Significant Helium Percentages in Two New Wells In Arizona

    This press release may be of interest to subscribers. Here is a section: 

    Based on normal accepted industry operation procedures, the company at this time and prior to further engineering and flow testing, would entertain a possible daily flow rate of between 4,100 and 5,600 MCFGPD based on aggregated production from both wells. The Company has compared these wells to the closest established and documented helium production located approximately 35 miles NE in the Pinta Dome Field.  Note: Desert Mountain Energy’s wells have been completed in members of the Pennsylvanian-aged Formations which are lower in depth than the helium productive Permian-aged Coconino Formation found at Pinta Dome (AZOGCC archives).  Production comparisons with a number of wells from the prolific Pinta Dome Field, specifically the Kerr-McGee Barfoot State#1, clearly shows that large artificial formation stimulation was not required to exceed the original projected calculated reserves by over 500%, over a 13-year production life (Olukoga 2016, AZOGCC Barfoot #1 well files).

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    Tenth Annual Energy Paper

    Thanks to a subscriber for this report from JPMorgan which may be of interest. Here is a section:

    We expect some of the “base” decline from existing shale wells to be replaced by new wells; the harder question is by how much. Operating and development costs have declined, well productivity has improved and there are large sunk costs in Appalachia (i.e., lease agreement options) that may compel many producers to keep drilling irrespective of lifecycle economics. Furthermore, if the onshore shale boom fades, we might see a revival of US offshore oil & gas production in the Gulf of Mexico. US oil production is also very sensitive to price: $55-$65 oil prices could add 1-3 mm bpd to US production when compared with JP Morgan’s $40 base case WTI price forecast. Even so, the US may now be close to peak oil and natural gas production and peak energy independence given financial pressures on the shale industry, and environmental pressures discussed next.

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    Wind Turbine Behemoth Plans for Future by Getting Into Hydrogen

    This article by William Mathis and Laura Millan Lombrana for Bloomberg may be of interest to subscribers. Here is a section:

    It could be a compelling model. Danish utility Orsted A/S is already exploring a number of hydrogen projects for its wind farms and Royal Dutch Shell Plc plans to produce the gas from a park it’s going to build off the Dutch coast. Making and selling hydrogen could provide a new source of revenue for wind projects that would offset the risk in the sometimes volatile electricity market.

    No one before has used wind power alone, without a grid connection, to produce hydrogen, Nauen said. It’s a project that will provide insight that could be crucial to scaling up the technology to much larger turbines and wind farms both on land and at sea.

    Earlier this year, Siemens Gamesa announced plans to build a 14-megawatt offshore turbine with a rotor diameter of 222 meters (728 feet), a few meters larger than the previous record.

    The company expects to conduct testing at the hydrogen pilot from October to December and then start hydrogen production in January. A Danish hydrogen fuel company called Everfuel will distribute the gas for vehicles including taxis and buses to use in Copenhagen.

    European governments aim to spend billions of dollars to help nurture domestic industries to produce hydrogen. The funding could help scale production and bring down costs.

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    Email of the day on electric vehicles.

    I really love your audio comments every day and I think they are very useful. Commenting on the EV mania that is on lately...I don't understand why people are so crazy about tesla enc... at the moment the batteries don't last for a long time and when an EV car catches fire, this fire is unstoppable, a safety problem where nobody ever talks about. On top of that, the power grid of older city centers are not equipped to charge an EV... so where is the point in buying one?

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    Email of the day on a layman's description of nuclear batteries.

    I suddenly seem to be bombarding you with communications, after years in the wilderness.    Don't worry, this will only be a brief interlude, I am sure.

       I just wanted to comment on the extract on "nano-diamond self-charging batteries" that you publish today.

    I read Loz Blain's whole article, and it seems a very important development indeed.   But in keeping with all articles on technology for the "layman", the story doesn't start at the beginning, but begins a bit down the down the road, and soon focusses on the applications alone.    This applies even more to your extract.

    I feel that this patronises the reader unnecessarily.    The average reader should be able to understand a brief well-structured explanation that starts from the beginning.   (This objection applies even more to articles on Covid-19 -- but that is another story.   In that case, I don't believe any politicians, or even some of their scientific advisers, have any real grasp of the subject.)

    Re. the batteries, we have to start from the energy source.   There are only 3 (or maybe 4) energy sources:-    Radiation (sunlight), Chemical energy (in fossil fuels, wood etc.) and Nuclear energy (stored in the nuclei of all atoms, and released from the unstable ones).    The 4th source would be Gravitational (hydro-electric power, tidal, possibly wave).
     

    The source in nano-diamond is nuclear, but the products (nitrogen gas) are harmless, and the beta radiation is contained (or so they claim).    The beta radiation (carrying the nuclear energy as kinetic energy) then transfers its energy to electrons, and creates the voltage.

    The prefix nano is jargon which could be avoided - it simply means "using minute quantities of material", or possibly "operating with minute quantities of material at a time (i.e. on a very small scale), within a larger structure".    (This is what is happening in living things, and thus in the cells of our bodies, 24/7.     Man has only just caught up with this technology, in a rudimentary manner.)
     

    "Self-charging" is superfluous and confusing.     I suppose it means that electricity is being continually formed from the nuclear energy store.    But this is equally true of a conventional battery;  the energy in that case is chemical, and there is far less than in the carbon-14 nuclei in nano-diamond batteries.

    The carbon-14 is nuclear waste - from the used graphite (graphite is a form of carbon) "moderator" blocks from the cores of nuclear power stations, of which there is a huge store apparently.

    Well it seems to me that if just 10 or so lines from what I have given above were used, that would be understandable to the average reader, and give them a good working knowledge.     (You may be interested to know, or probably already suspected, that I tutor A level physics and chemistry.   My great passion is communicating these matters clearly.   Granted, it is a great help if the reader has some facility in handling spatial ideas, but that applies to so many technical areas.)

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    Nano-diamond self-charging batteries could disrupt energy as we know it

    This article by Loz Blain for NewAtlast.com may be of interest to subscribers. Here is a section:

    And it can scale up to electric vehicle sizes and beyond, offering superb power density in a battery pack that is projected to last as long as 90 years in that application – something that could be pulled out of your old car and put into a new one. If part of a cell fails, the active nano diamond part can be recycled into another cell, and once they reach the end of their lifespan – which could be up to 28,000 years for a low-powered sensor that might, for example, be used on a satellite – they leave nothing but "harmless by-products."

    In the words of Dr. John Shawe-Taylor, UNESCO Chair and University College London Professor: “NDB has the potential to solve the major global issue of carbon emissions in one stroke without the expensive infrastructure
    projects, energy transportation costs, or negative environmental impacts associated with alternate solutions such as carbon capture at fossil fuel power stations, hydroelectric plants, turbines, or nuclear power stations. Their technology’s ability to deliver energy over very long periods of time without the need for recharging, refueling, or servicing puts them in an ideal position to tackle the world’s energy requirements through a distributed solution with close to zero environmental impact and energy transportation costs.”

    Indeed, the NDB battery offers an outstanding 24-hour energy proposition for off-grid living, and the NDB team is adamant that it wishes to devote a percentage of its time to providing it to needy remote communities as a charity service with the support of some of the company's business customers.

    Should the company chew right through the world's full supply of carbon-14 nuclear waste – a prospect that would take some extremely serious volume – NDB says it can create its own carbon-14 raw material simply and cost-effectively.

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    Tesla resale values

    This graphic from Bloomberg may be of interest to subscribers:


    It’s early, but there are signs Tesla Inc.’s Model 3 could be as exceptional in the used market as it has been in the new-car world. The sedan has sold at volumes no other electric vehicle has come close to reaching, turning Tesla into the most valuable auto company in the world. Car-shopping websites still have small sample sizes to work with, yet so far, the Model 3s are retaining much more of their value than their small luxury-vehicle peers and they’re selling quickly once owners list them for sale -- on average just 29.3 days from March through June -- according to iSeeCars.com.

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