Articles Posted in Energy Policy

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Three scientists with the Department of Earth Sciences at Southern Methodist University have published the results of a study of blowouts of old wells in the Permian Basin caused by injection of produced water. The summary from the study:

Wastewater, a byproduct during oil extraction, is generally injected back into the ground. Permian Basin has witnessed several incidents of leakage of wastewater in the last 3 years. Recently in January 2022, huge amounts of wastewater were expelled at a high pressure from an old well. We used satellite data and wastewater injection data to understand the cause of these events. We found that the wastewater injection happening nearly several kilometers away is responsible for these leakages. We also discovered a highly pressurized wastewater lake below the surface in this region using geophysical modeling. Due to high pressures, the land in this region rose by 40 cm in just 2 years. Meanwhile, a part of this region sunk by 3 cm because of the leakage in January 2022. Our findings raise concerns about the potential for more leakages in the near future if action is not taken.

The study focused on the Central Basin Platform in the Permian Basin:

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Maybe you’ve heard of “green hydrogen.” There’s been a lot of press lately about projects to produce hydrogen to use as an alternative fuel, and the Inflation Adjustment Act provides tax credits for production of “green hydrogen.” But did you know that there are other hydrogen “colors”? An excellent article from MartenLaw.com provides a summary of the methods and tax credits and regulations being developed for green hydrogen programs. Here is its description of colors of hydrogen:

Types of Hydrogen

Hydrogen can be created through a variety of techniques. To distinguish between the different processes, the industry has developed an informal color-based categorization system:

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Excerpts from Dr. Scott Tinker’s AEIN – Alfred J. Boulos lecture:

“Energy security underpins economic security, which in turns lets you invest in the environment and obtain climate security. If you start by focusing on low emissions, you will not get energy that is affordable or reliable. You need to focus on the ‘radical middle’ of this particular triangle.

“Before the Paris accords, the middle ground was leaning towards the economy. The Paris Agreement made the focus a lot firmer on climate. Then the pandemic hit, and we went straight back to the economy. After COP26, the focus shifted again to climate, but the war in Ukraine put it squarely on security. There is always a factor to make the focus on one rather than all three.

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Winter Storm Uri

The fallout from the Texas Freeze in February 2021 continues. A year later, UT’s Austin Energy Institute concluded that multiple failures of power plants, gas processing plants, gas storage and distribution facilities, and gas production all contributed to the system failures. ERCOT management was fired; natural gas prices spiked to more than $400/MMBtu; politicians blamed wind and solar generation; the legislature passed legislation requiring the Public Utility Commission and the Railroad Commission to strengthen weatherization requirements for production, processing and generation facilities and has since criticized those agencies for failing to fix the problem. ERCOT drastically raised electricity prices during the storm, resulting in multiple bankruptcies. The legislature provided for securitization of about $7 billion in private losses caused by the storm, so those losses are spread over the next twenty years in customer rate increases. Expect new legislation in the upcoming session.

Mitchell v. Map Resources, 649 S.W.3d 180 (Tex. 2022)

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Dr. Scott Tinker will host a 12-episode TV series on energy and climate, on Austin’s PBS station, KLRU, beginning September 4 at 6 pm and streaming on PBS.org. More information can be found here.

From the press release:

Energy and climate are intertwined, two of the most important topics in the world today. Yet very little is known about them. This show aims to change that. ENERGY SWITCH brings together two renowned experts from government, NGOs, academia and industry, with differing perspectives on important energy and climate topics, such as: Could solar and wind power our future? Or could hydrogen be the dominant energy source? Should we have more or less nuclear power? How should we respond to climate change? What policies most effectively reduce emissions? How could we pay for them?

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The Inflation Reduction Act, passed by the Senate yesterday and on its way to passage in the House, contains carrots and sticks for reducing methane emissions in the oil and gas sector.

From Inside Climate News:

One of the least discussed, but potentially most significant, climate aspects of the proposed Inflation Reduction Act is a fee it would place on methane emissions from oil and gas operations. The bill would charge companies for methane that they leak or vent into the atmosphere, with the fee starting at $900 per ton in 2024 and increasing to $1500 per ton by 2026.

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I just watched a hearing of the House Science and Technology Committee on efforts to reduce methane emissions from the US oil and gas industry. Four experts testified: Dr. David Lyon from Environmental Defense Fund, Riley Duren with Carbon Mapper, Dr. Brian Anderson, director of the National Environmental Technology Laboratory, par of the Department of Energy, and Dr. Greg Rieker, professor at the University of Colorado and founder of LongPath Technologies.

Some interesting highlights:

  • Methane emissions have accounted for about half of global temperature rise since the beginning of the industrial revolution.
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A great article appears in the March Section Report of the Oil, Gas and Energy Resources Law section report, by Jacqueline Weaver, Professor Emeritus, University of Houston Law Center: “The Railroad Commission’s New Duties to Keep Texans Warm: Winter Storm Uri Forces Change.” Here are some excerpts:

The throughput of dry gas production from Permian Basin processing plants dropped 85% from early February to February 18, [2021] and two-thirds of the gas processing plants in the Permian Basin had outages. The natural gas industry blamed electricity suppliers for cutting off power to them when they most needed it; power generators blamed the gas industry for failing to supply gas to them. Many natural gas providers had not filed a short form with ERCOT, the grid operator for most of Texas, that would have exempted them from electric outages during emergencies. The Railroad commission seemed unaware of this form and exemption process. Clearly, the natural gas and electricity sectors needed to communicate and coordinate more closely. In the ERCOT system, natural gas provides about half of all electricity generation.

According to an FERC-NERC Staff Report on Storm Uri:

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The Cockrell School of Engineering at the University of Texas in Austin this week issued a report, three years in the making, “Don’t Mess with Texas: Getting the Lone Star State to Net-Zero by 2050.” The study was co-authored by Vibrant Clean Energy and the University of Colorado Boulder. Funding was provided by The Cynthia and George Mitchell Foundation, the Energy Foundation, the meadows Foundation, and the Catena Foundation.

The study focused on four scenarios: Business as Usual, Electrification, Electrification with Accelerated Clean Power, Hydrogen and Carriers, and Extensive Capture. The study analyzed the viability of technologies for each scenario and its impact on carbon emissions, pollutant emissions, energy efficiency, job creation, water use, and land use. Its conclusion:

Achieving net-zero is difficult, but it’s also potentially lucrative; our analysis estimates it could spur economic growth and create jobs. In each scenario, we consider the environmental, economic, and jobs impacts to Texas over the next thirty years in transitioning Texas to net-zero conditions. We compare and discuss each scenario, including BAU, to reveal key policies, technological developments, economic impacts, and environmental trade-offs across the various pathways. These scenarios are neither predictive nor prescriptive. Rather, they are illustrative. A key takeaway is that it is possible for the Lone Star State to achieve a net-zero future, and there are multiple ways of getting there. The actual path Texas takes will likely look different from any of these scenarios, but assessing the trade-offs of different pathways can provide valuable insight for the next steps to take. Scenario conditions that have an outsized influence on future emissions or are present across multiple pathways should be strongly considered in the near term as win-win decisions Texas can make now while future technology development and market conditions continue to unfold. Figure ES-2 summarizes the major impacts from each scenario.

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We’ve seen much posturing and finger-pointing from politicians on who is to blame for power failures during Winter Storm Uri last February. UT’s Austin Energy Institute has issued a report: The timeline and Events of the February 2021 Texas Electric Grid Blackouts, laying out the facts on what happened. The POWER Committee of the Austin Energy Institute, chaired by Dr. Carey King, issued this report. Dr. King does research related to how energy systems interact within the economy and environment, and how policy and social systems can made decisions and trade-offs among competing factors. The report clarifies how much the reduction in natural gas supply contributed to the disaster.

Summary from the report:

Factors contributing to the electricity blackouts of February 15-18, 2021, include the following: Continue reading →

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John McFarland
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