October 3, 2014
ΟΛΙΓΟΩΡΗ επίσκεψη στο Κάιρο πραγματοποίησε ο Υπουργός Ενέργειας, Γιώργος Λακκοτρύπης, επιστρέφοντας από τον Ομάν στην Κύπρο. Όπως μεταδίδεται από το Κάιρο, στο αεροδρόμιο τον Κύπριο αξιωματούχο υποδέχθηκε ο Υπουργός Πετρελαίων και Ορυκτών Πόρων, κ. Sherif Ismail.
Επίσημες πηγές του Υπουργείου Πετρελαίων της Αίγυπτου ανέφεραν ότι ο Κύπριος υπουργός συνέχισε τις συνομιλίες που είχε πραγματοποιήσει τον περασμένο μήνα, για τους τρόπους ενίσχυσης των διμερών σχέσεων μεταξύ Αιγύπτου και Κύπρου στον τομέα πετρελαίων και φυσικού αερίου και ιδιαίτερα στους τομείς έρευνας και εξόρυξης στην περιοχή της Μεσογείου. Συζητήθηκε επίσης το ενδεχόμενο ανάπτυξης του φυσικού αερίου στην Κύπρο, με χρήση των διαθέσιμων στην Αίγυπτο υποδομών και παραγωγικών εγκαταστάσεων, η ανταλλαγή τεχνικής εμπειρογνωμοσύνης.
Τέλος, εξετάσθηκε και η πρόοδος στα προγράμματα έρευνας και εξερεύνησης που εφαρμόζονται σήμερα στην Κύπρος.
Στο μεταξύ, στην αντίπερα όχθη, ο Τούρκος Υπουργός ΕΕ Βολκάν Μποζκίρ εξέφρασε την αντίθεσή του στην εκμετάλλευση του φυσικού αερίου από την Κυπριακή Δημοκρατία. Σε δηλώσεις του είπε ότι «είμαστε οπωσδήποτε εναντίον του να χρησιμοποιήσει μόνο η διοίκηση της νοτίου Κύπρου το φυσικό αέριο», κατά την έκφρασή του.
Σε ειδική τελετή υπογραφής του πρωτοκόλλου συνεργασίας του υπουργείου του με το τουρκικό υπουργείο οικονομικών για την ενταξιακή πορεία της Τουρκίας, ο Τούρκος Υπουργός υποστήριξε ότι αυτό δεν είναι δίκαιο και θα βλάψει τις διαπραγματεύσεις οι οποίες συνεχίζονται για τη λύση του Κυπριακού. «Γι` αυτό το λόγο, επιμένουμε αυτές οι πηγές να χρησιμοποιηθούν από κοινού και να διατεθεί όλος αυτός ο πλούτος για ολόκληρο το νησί», είπε ο Βολκάν Μποζκίρ.
Πρόσθεσε ότι είναι σημαντικό να χρησιμοποιηθούν οι φυσικές πηγές ως βοηθητικό στοιχείο για τη λύση του Κυπριακού. Ο Μποζκίρ είπε ότι «μόλις επιτραπεί το άνοιγμα των 14 κεφαλαίων τα οποία έχουν κλείσει εξαιτίας του κυπριακού προβλήματος, η Τουρκία θα είναι σε θέση να τα ανοίξει μέσα σε δέκα μήνες».
SOURCE
Friday, October 3, 2014
Thursday, October 2, 2014
SaskPower Unveils First Commercial-Scale, Coal-Fired Power Plant to Capture Carbon | theenergycollective
SaskPower Unveils First Commercial-Scale, Coal-Fired Power Plant to Capture Carbon
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Posted October 1, 2014
Keywords: Carbon and De-carbonization, Energy Security, Tech, Storage,Sustainability, Utilities, Climate, Coal, Efficiency, Environmental Policy, Cleantech, Green Business, Risk Management, Energy and Economy, Fuels, News, carbon capture and storage (ccs), climate change mitigation, coal plant emissions
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For the first time ever, a large-scale, coal-fired power plant is capturing carbon dioxide to keep it from being released into the atmosphere – a milestone for a technology critical to addressing climate change.
Canadian electric utility SaskPower has switched on unit 3 at its Boundary Dam power plant, about 10 miles from the North Dakota border, and will hold an official grand opening Oct. 2. Following a $1.2 billion retrofit, the 46-year-old, 110-megawatt coal unit is now on course toward capturing 90 percent of its carbon emissions. Other upgrades reduce nitrous oxide emissions and capture 100 percent of the unit’s sulfur dioxide emissions.
Numerous commercial-scale carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology projects have been deployed in the industrial sector. In the power sector, demonstration-scale projects have been deployed, but this is the first commercial-scale project.
We will need to construct hundreds of such projects (along with other zero- and lower-emitting technologies) if greenhouse gas emissions are to be reduced to levels that avoid the worst effects of climate change. According to the International Energy Agency, more than 440 terawatt-hours (TWh) of CCS must be generated between 2020 and 2035 to give us a chance of limiting global temperature rise to 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels. To get a sense of that scale, SaskPower’s unit 3 can produce up to 1 TWh of electricity per year.
The Boundary Dam project is important not just because it’s the first of its kind, but because it demonstrates a way to help make carbon capture technology economically viable -- by turning unwanted pollutants into valuable commodities. SaskPower has agreed to transport and sell its captured carbon dioxide (CO2) to an oilfield operated by Cenovus for use in enhanced oil recovery (EOR) operations. The captured CO2 helps coax additional production from declining oil fields and results in the permanent storage of the CO2 underground. (In addition, captured sulfur dioxide emissions will be used to produce 50 tons per day of sulfuric acid for industrial customers, and SaskPower will sell the plant’s coal combustion residuals, also known as coal ash, for use in construction products like drywall and concrete.)
Selling captured carbon dioxide for use in enhanced oil recovery provides a vital revenue stream for CCS projects, helping offset high investment costs, particularly for first-movers like SaskPower. In fact, most existing or planned carbon capture projects in the world today are taking advantage of CO2-EOR. In the process, they are helping to advance the technology and demonstrate its broader potential in curbing carbon emissions.
Other factors also came together to make this project work, including the fact that SaskPower has an abundant source of inexpensive lignite coal near the power plant, and if need be, SaskPower can securely store its CO2 emissions in a nearby, deep-underground saline formation. Available storage will be critical for all CCS projects in the near-term, especially if an EOR option is not available.
SaskPower refurbished the coal unit at a cost of $300 million. Building the capture facility was projected to cost around $790 million, of which the Canadian government contributed $220 million.
When I visited the plant earlier this year, SaskPower acknowledged that the capture facility had been over-engineered to ensure it would deliver on its targeted 90 percent capture rate. Right-sizing future capture facilities and applying lessons learned during construction of this facility mean the costs for similar projects will come down over time, which is critical to wider deployment and lower global CO2 emissions.
That’s important because coal-fired electricity generation is not going away anytime soon. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, in an analysis of its recently proposed carbon limits for existing power plants, projects coal will still supply more than 30 percent of U.S electricity in 2030, down only 9 percentage points from today’s levels. Meanwhile, coal use in the developing world is soaring. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s International Energy Outlook, coal consumption in developing countries, led by China and India, is expected to increase 70 percent by 2040.
With more than 2,300 coal-fired power plants around the world, deployment of post-combustion carbon capture and storage technology like what’s in use at the Boundary Dam power plant is an important way to reduce greenhouse gases and a significant step in the right direction.
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Authored by:
Doug Vine
Doug Vine is a Senior Energy Fellow at the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions. He is responsible for supporting the Center’s work on global and domestic energy production and utilization. Additionally, he focuses on topical energy issues including electric power, natural gas and oil market developments.
Link to source: http://theenergycollective.com/dougvine/1567151/saskpower-unveils-first-commercial-scale-coal-fired-power-plant-capture-carbon
In the eastern Mediterranean, energy alone cannot improve security relationships | Jerusalem Post
It has become clear over the past few years that Israel’s relations with Cyprus and Greece have improved, and that trilateral cooperation has created an Eastern Mediterranean framework that is in part based on shared energy interests. The Levant Basin natural gas discoveries in 2009, 2010 and 2011, combined with the rupture in Israel-Turkey relations, paved the way for enhanced political, economic and military cooperation.
Recent developments, however, indicate that a new Eastern Mediterranean framework including Cyprus, Israel, Jordan and Egypt is forming, and while there is certainly a concrete basis for this new arena in Eastern Mediterranean energy politics, it is unlikely that it will produce a dynamic similar to that between Israel, Cyprus, and Greece.
Israel’s close military ties with Turkey throughout the 1990s and early 2000s limited its bilateral relationships with Cyprus and Greece to cooperative public and private sector economic ties, namely trade and tourism. This changed toward the end of the decade when Israel and Turkey severed virtually all political and defense ties, creating an opening for broader partnerships with Athens and Nicosia that increased with the discovery of natural gas off the shores of Israel and Cyprus and talk of exporting that gas to Europe via Greece.
Despite that option’s infeasibility and the decreasing probability that any Israeli gas will reach Cyprus at all, Israel has conducted several joint air and naval exercises with both Cyprus and Greece, including a trilateral drill with the United States in April. While some of these exercises merely replace the practice space over the Mediterranean that Israel lost when relations with Turkey soured, others have also focused explicitly on simulating defense of offshore natural gas infrastructure, such as the annual Noble Dina military exercise of Israel, the US and Greece.
In addition to security ties, political cooperation has also bolstered relations between Israel and Cyprus. A bilateral 2010 agreement delimiting the Cypriot and Israeli Exclusive Economic Zones was followed by another bilateral agreement in April 2014 that provides for the exchange and protection of confidential information on hydrocarbons discovered in Cyprus’ Block 12 and the adjacent Israeli license.
While Israel and Greece have not signed any formal agreements since the gas was discovered, officials have exchanged several visits at the highest diplomatic levels. Still, Israel, Cyprus and Greece signed a tripartite energy memorandum of understanding in 2013 that mandates cooperation to protect regionally important infrastructure in the Mediterranean where natural gas fields are located, and includes a joint declaration of intent to lay an electric cable to link Israel and Cyprus’s grids that continues to Crete.
The emerging dynamic between Israel, Cyprus, Jordan and Egypt, on the other hand, appears to be more fragmented and limited, and is driven by Egyptian and Jordanian energy insecurity rather than a shared desire to monetize transnational resources. Jordan needs a cheaper source of fuel to replace the heavy, more expensive diesel that the country was forced to import following cuts in natural gas supplies from Egypt following the 2011 uprising. Egypt, meanwhile, has suffered from industry mismanagement and corruption, requiring the former net-energy exporter to import oil and gas. Any future contract that exports gas to Egypt for re-export abroad will likely include a provision for domestic supply.
Israel’s Leviathan consortium has signed non-binding letters of intent to export gas to the Arab Potash Group, Jordan Bromine and the National Electric Power Company in Jordan, and to liquefied natural gas facilities in Egypt operated by BG Group and Union Fenosa Gas. In September, Jordan’s Energy and Mineral Resources Minister Mohammad Hamad said his country would sign a letter of intent to import an unspecified quantity of natural gas from Cyprus, and expects the contract to be signed in 2015.
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Sisi also issued a decree in September approving the ratification of a framework agreement signed with Cyprus in 2013, which provides for the co-exploitation of hydrocarbon reserves in the adjacent Egyptian and Cypriot Exclusive Economic Zones.
While such signs indicate substantial cooperation, however, it is unlikely that these relations will evolve to include joint military drills that simulate defense of natural gas infrastructure. The Israel- Egypt relationship has certainly warmed under Sisi, but it is difficult to imagine security cooperation that goes beyond intelligence sharing and counterterrorism efforts toward the unstable Sinai. Israel’s relationship with Jordan is measurably better, but joint military drills would be unpopular in Amman, where 40 members of parliament recently signed a memorandum calling on the government to halt plans to import Israeli gas. Meanwhile, neither Egypt nor Jordan have any particular need for maneuver practice space or partners.
In the case of Israel, Cyprus, Jordan and Egypt, natural gas alone will not forge security networks that promote new non-commercial cooperation. As was evident in Israel’s changing relations with Cyprus and Greece, a game-changing political event would also be necessary.
Still, the significance of these various letters of intent, if they do indeed become binding contracts, cannot be underestimated.
East Mediterranean hydrocarbons will factor into regional energy security dynamics for decades to come.
The author is a writer based in Washington, DC, and an MA candidate at the George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs. You can follow her on Twitter at @Allison_Good1.
Recent developments, however, indicate that a new Eastern Mediterranean framework including Cyprus, Israel, Jordan and Egypt is forming, and while there is certainly a concrete basis for this new arena in Eastern Mediterranean energy politics, it is unlikely that it will produce a dynamic similar to that between Israel, Cyprus, and Greece.
Israel’s close military ties with Turkey throughout the 1990s and early 2000s limited its bilateral relationships with Cyprus and Greece to cooperative public and private sector economic ties, namely trade and tourism. This changed toward the end of the decade when Israel and Turkey severed virtually all political and defense ties, creating an opening for broader partnerships with Athens and Nicosia that increased with the discovery of natural gas off the shores of Israel and Cyprus and talk of exporting that gas to Europe via Greece.
Despite that option’s infeasibility and the decreasing probability that any Israeli gas will reach Cyprus at all, Israel has conducted several joint air and naval exercises with both Cyprus and Greece, including a trilateral drill with the United States in April. While some of these exercises merely replace the practice space over the Mediterranean that Israel lost when relations with Turkey soured, others have also focused explicitly on simulating defense of offshore natural gas infrastructure, such as the annual Noble Dina military exercise of Israel, the US and Greece.
In addition to security ties, political cooperation has also bolstered relations between Israel and Cyprus. A bilateral 2010 agreement delimiting the Cypriot and Israeli Exclusive Economic Zones was followed by another bilateral agreement in April 2014 that provides for the exchange and protection of confidential information on hydrocarbons discovered in Cyprus’ Block 12 and the adjacent Israeli license.
While Israel and Greece have not signed any formal agreements since the gas was discovered, officials have exchanged several visits at the highest diplomatic levels. Still, Israel, Cyprus and Greece signed a tripartite energy memorandum of understanding in 2013 that mandates cooperation to protect regionally important infrastructure in the Mediterranean where natural gas fields are located, and includes a joint declaration of intent to lay an electric cable to link Israel and Cyprus’s grids that continues to Crete.
The emerging dynamic between Israel, Cyprus, Jordan and Egypt, on the other hand, appears to be more fragmented and limited, and is driven by Egyptian and Jordanian energy insecurity rather than a shared desire to monetize transnational resources. Jordan needs a cheaper source of fuel to replace the heavy, more expensive diesel that the country was forced to import following cuts in natural gas supplies from Egypt following the 2011 uprising. Egypt, meanwhile, has suffered from industry mismanagement and corruption, requiring the former net-energy exporter to import oil and gas. Any future contract that exports gas to Egypt for re-export abroad will likely include a provision for domestic supply.
Israel’s Leviathan consortium has signed non-binding letters of intent to export gas to the Arab Potash Group, Jordan Bromine and the National Electric Power Company in Jordan, and to liquefied natural gas facilities in Egypt operated by BG Group and Union Fenosa Gas. In September, Jordan’s Energy and Mineral Resources Minister Mohammad Hamad said his country would sign a letter of intent to import an unspecified quantity of natural gas from Cyprus, and expects the contract to be signed in 2015.
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Sisi also issued a decree in September approving the ratification of a framework agreement signed with Cyprus in 2013, which provides for the co-exploitation of hydrocarbon reserves in the adjacent Egyptian and Cypriot Exclusive Economic Zones.
While such signs indicate substantial cooperation, however, it is unlikely that these relations will evolve to include joint military drills that simulate defense of natural gas infrastructure. The Israel- Egypt relationship has certainly warmed under Sisi, but it is difficult to imagine security cooperation that goes beyond intelligence sharing and counterterrorism efforts toward the unstable Sinai. Israel’s relationship with Jordan is measurably better, but joint military drills would be unpopular in Amman, where 40 members of parliament recently signed a memorandum calling on the government to halt plans to import Israeli gas. Meanwhile, neither Egypt nor Jordan have any particular need for maneuver practice space or partners.
In the case of Israel, Cyprus, Jordan and Egypt, natural gas alone will not forge security networks that promote new non-commercial cooperation. As was evident in Israel’s changing relations with Cyprus and Greece, a game-changing political event would also be necessary.
Still, the significance of these various letters of intent, if they do indeed become binding contracts, cannot be underestimated.
East Mediterranean hydrocarbons will factor into regional energy security dynamics for decades to come.
The author is a writer based in Washington, DC, and an MA candidate at the George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs. You can follow her on Twitter at @Allison_Good1.
Link to source: http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/In-the-eastern-Mediterranean-energy-alone-cannot-improve-security-relationships-377824
Wednesday, October 1, 2014
Israel's Leviathan gas field group submits $6.5b development plan | Haaretz
Drilling at the Leviathan natural gas field off the Mediterranean shore. Photo by Courtesy Albatross
By Reuters | Apr. 16, 2014 | 2:49 AM | 
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By Eran Azran | Jan. 26, 2014 | 10:30 AM | 1
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The partners in Leviathan, Israel’s largest natural gas field, have submitted their initial development plan to Israeli authorities, which one source said Tuesday envisages producing 16 billion cubic meters of gas a year.
The group, led by Texas-based Noble Energy and Israel’s Delek Group, handed in its proposal – a $6.5 billion endeavor – after months of trying to determine the best way to develop the field, which lies in about 1,500 meters of water about 130 kilometers off Israel’s Mediterranean coast.
A spokeswoman for the Energy and Water Resources Ministry, which must now approve the plan, confirmed it had been received, but disclosed no details.
With estimated reserves of 622 BCM, Leviathan is one of the world’s largest offshore discoveries of the past decade, but the partners have had difficulties identifying overseas markets for gas.
Talks to bring in Australia’s Woodside Petroleum, a liquefied natural gas specialist for potential customers in East Asia, fell through in March. Turkey, a potential market, has conditioned buying Israeli gas on political demands, including easing Israel’s blockade of the Gaza Strip. Besides being a large market in its own right, Turkey could also serve as a gateway to Europe through a 8-12 BCM a year pipeline.
Israel had set a November deadline for Leviathan developers to submit their plans. Failure to meet the deadline would open the door to production delays beyond 2018, when a raft of new export projects around the world threatens to depress profits.
An industry source said the first stage of the Leviathan plan sees construction of a floating production, storage and offloading unit passing 16 BCM of gas a year via pipelines to Israel, the Palestinian Authority and other neighbors that decide to buy the gas.
Production is expected to begin by 2018 and initial investment could reach $6.5 billion, the source said, which was in line with previous forecasts.
The Leviathan partners are in talks with Britain’s BG Group, which wants to bring gas in to feed its Egyptian LNG export plant, and with Jordan’s national electricity company.
Later development plans were not included in the proposal, and could include direct LNG exports to more distant markets, officials have said.
Shares of Delek Drilling and Avner, the two Delek Group units holding stakes in Leviathan, rose in Tel Aviv Stock Exchange trading Tuesday. Delek closed up 0.1% at 20.16 shekels ($5.47) and Avner by 0.2% to 3.65 shekels.
Ratio, another Israel partner in Leviathan, late on Monday completed the institutional tranche of an offering of bonds and warrants aimed at raising money for its share of the development costs. The sale drew orders for 510 million shekels, two-and-half times the amount on offer, prompting Ratio to increase the size of the sale from 250 million shekels to 320 million shekels.
The remaining 76 million shekels of the bonds were due to be sold in a public tranche late Tuesday. Ratio shares finished 0.8% higher at 49 agorot in Tel Aviv.
With reporting by Eran Azran.
Link to source: http://www.haaretz.com/business/.premium-1.618502#
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