Austin Energy, the City of Austin’s municipally owned electric utility, recently announced a deal with Recurrent Energy to buy up to 150 megawatts of electricity from a solar farm to be constructed by Recurrent in West Texas, at 5 cents per kilowatt hour, guaranteed for 20 years. Austin Energy is…
Articles Posted in Energy markets
Two New Technologies Could Change How We Use Energy
Here are two emerging technologies that could change how we might use natural gas to fuel our cars and electrify our homes and offices. A company called Redox Power Systems is building a plant in Florida to produce The Cube, a dishwasher-sized system that generates electricity from natural gas using electro-chemical…
Texas’ Remarkable Rise in Oil Production
Here is a graph from the Energy Information Administration showing the Texas crude miracle: Texas now produces 36% of US oil production. The graph below is from a Reuters article, showing the resultant drop in US crude imports:
Three Experts on the Future of the Shale Boom
In November, Texas Monthly hosted a panel discussion at Rice University’s Baker Institute for public policy about the boom in shale oil development in the US. The panel members: Arthur E. Berman, a Sugar Land-based geologist; Scott W. Tinker, the director of the Bureau of Economic Geology at the University of…
End of the Shale Boom?
I have recently seen articles predicting the end of the shale boom, coming not only from those who have consistently predicted that shale production would never amount to anything, but also from respected sources whose predictions have previously proven accurate. A recent Houston Chronicle article quotes from a paper written…
Energy Statistics
I subscribe to the Economist, and it recently sent its subscribers a booklet, Pocket World in Figures, that contains rankings of 198 countries in categories ranging from longest river to biggest cities to number of refugees to living standards, etc. Here are some interesting statistics related to energy from that…
Texas Oil Production Exceeds Iran’s
Texas pumped 2.575 million barrels of oil per day in June, exceeding Iran’s production of 2.56 million barrels/day. Texas now ranks ahead of seven members of OPEC in oil production. The U.S. is now the world’s largest exporter of refined fuels, including gasoline and diesel. The U.S. met 87 percent of…
Decoupling Oil and Gas
A recent editorial in the Houston Chronicle makes a good point: we should no longer think of “oil and gas” together. Their paths have diverged, at least in the US. The prices of oil and gas used to be roughly equivalent, based on their energy value – their Btu content.…
Two Interesting Graphs from EIA
The Energy Information Administration continues to produce fascinating graphs. Two recent ones are below. Natural gas hammered coal last year. Low natural gas prices still made electricity cheap. West Texas Intermediate Crude declined, while Brent crude increased. Electricity generated from natural gas equaled that generated from coal for…
“Energy Independence”?
We’re in the crazy election season once again, and once again all candidates have promised “energy independence.” Newt Gingrich promised to lower gasoline prices. President Obama takes credit for low natural gas prices. Governor Romney says we can eliminate imports of crude oil. Presidential candidates have promised energy independence ever…