Blog – Page 214 – Pecos Operating

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Mr. Saving-Humanity-Singlehandedly-Myself Bill Gates is reportedly backing a mining startup that is getting close to “investing” in the Democratic Republic of Congo – which is, of course, a nice way to say, likely mining there.

The company, KoBold Metals, already is developing a copper project in Zambia, Bloomberg reported this week. Chief executive officer Kurt House said the company had already bid for one asset but didn’t close a deal.

He told Bloomberg: “We think it is probably the best place in the world for the types of materials we’re looking for.”

KoBold is actively scouting international sites for fresh reserves of critical metals vital for the green-energy shift, the report says. The Congo, a leading cobalt supplier and major copper source, is poised for a surge in demand for these elements, essential for clean-energy systems and battery technology.

The company, headquartered in the San Francisco Bay Area, seeks Congo operations in line with President Biden’s administration’s focus on enhancing American stakes in the electric-vehicle value chain. With financial support from entities like Gates’s Breakthrough Energy Ventures and market leader BHP Ltd., the firm also boasts investment from Michael Bloomberg.

But recall we have written in the past about the horrors of mining that takes place in the Congo.

Siddharth Kara, who is a Harvard visiting professor and also the author of “Cobalt Red: How The Blood of The Congo Powers Our Lives” took to the Joe Rogan podcast late last year with comments about cobalt mining that have garnered millions of listens.

He told Rogan that there’s no such thing as “clean cobalt” and that the term was “all marketing,” according to a wrap up of the podcast by the NY Post. He noted that the level of suffering of Congolese people working in cobalt mines was “astounding”, the report says.

“I’ve never seen [a cobalt mine that did not rely on child labor or slavery] and I’ve been to almost all the major industrial cobalt mines,” he told Rogan.

Your move, Mr. Gates.

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World Oil

(Bloomberg) – OPEC+ still has a positive outlook for growth in oil demand, despite the headwinds faced by the global economy, as it prepares for its next ministerial meeting. “The economy, despite the challenges, is still doing quite well,” OPEC Secretary-General Haitham Al-Ghais said at the Argus European Crude Conference in London on Tuesday. “We are positive on demand, we’re still quite robust on demand.”

Source: Reuters

The top official at OPEC+ said he couldn’t preempt the outcome of the group’s next ministerial meeting in the final weekend of November.

“All I can say for now is we continue to monitor supply and demand fundamentals on a daily basis,” Al-Ghais said. “When the ministers meeting in Vienna at the end of this month they will review all of this and take appropriate measures.”

The next OPEC+ meeting could see Russia and Saudi Arabia decide whether to continue their extra voluntary production curbs into 2024. On Sunday, Riyadh and Moscow announced that they will both stick with production reductions totaling roughly 1.3 MMbpd in December, rubber-stamping a plan outlined a couple of months ago. Those curbs are in addition to cuts agreed by the rest of the group, which last until the end of next year.

“I think the U.S. economy is doing very well. Europe may be struggling a bit,” Al-Ghais said. “We’re still talking about the Chinese economy growing by over 4.5% to 5%” and overall global oil demand continues to rise significantly, he said.

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Maine is considering new kinds of electric rates to encourage more widespread home adoption of electric vehicle chargers and heat pumps while easing the strain these technologies add to the power grid.

Central Maine Power, the larger of the state’s two investor-owned utilities, is working with regulators and advocacy groups on designs for time-of-use rates, which charge customers more for electricity use at times of day when demand on the grid is at its peak.

But these rates are only one piece of the puzzle, stakeholders say. They anticipate more planning work to come on complementary technologies that will make it easier for customers to change their energy use.

Time-of-use and related tools to limit and shift electricity demand are currently most common among larger commercial and industrial customers, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. But as home electrification accelerates, some utilities have begun trying out similar programs for residential ratepayers.

Central Maine Power is currently piloting seasonal heating and electrification-focused rates, and the smaller Maine utility, Versant Power, has its own time-of-use programs for heat pumps and electric vehicle charging already in place.

The Maine Public Utilities Commission is working to expand time-of-use rates on multiple fronts, including in one proceeding that was required as part of the June settlement in Central Maine Power’s latest rate case. The utility, which is owned by Connecticut-based Avangrid, is due to file a proposal on the issue Dec. 1.

“I personally believe that there’s a great opportunity here for all of our policy goals to be advanced,” said deputy Maine public advocate Drew Landry, whose office acts as an ombudsperson for residential utility customers. “But if we do it wrong, there’s a chance that we could undermine all of them.”

Transportation and buildings are Maine’s top sources of planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions. This underlies the state climate plan’s ambitious goals for expanding the use of electric vehicles and heat pumps, which use electricity for high-efficiency water and space heating as well as air conditioning.

Maine relies more than any other state on home heating oil but has made strong progress on switching to heat pumps, already meeting its initial target of installing 100,000 new units by 2025. The large, rural state is also hoping to accelerate its so-far slow progress on electric vehicle adoption.

The utilities commission’s goals for its ongoing time-of-use work with Central Maine Power and other stakeholders are to “incentivize customers to shift usage away from the summer peak,” encourage wintertime use of heat pumps and other efficient systems, and complement state rebate and discount programs for this kind of technology.

In its upcoming proposal, the utility must consider at least four alternative rate designs specific to electric vehicles and heat pumps and consider a rebate program for customers who successfully reduce their electricity usage at peak times. The utility is also asked to propose a “customer education and communication plan” on these initiatives, and will have to draft data-gathering plans to aid in future, similar rate design processes.

Rates in this particular proceeding would fit under the distribution charge on customers’ bills. A separate ongoing docket looks at tying similar rates to the supply charge, which is a larger part of ratepayers’ costs.

Landry, the deputy public advocate, said more use of heat pumps and electric vehicles is sure to drive up New England’s peak demand, which typically falls between 5 and 9 p.m. in summer and, increasingly, winter.

Absent large-scale energy storage, Landry said, this increased demand could exceed available renewable power supplies, potentially adding to emissions. New England’s grid remains largely reliant on natural gas and, in recent years’ cold snaps, has tended to burn oil and coal as its backup fuels.

Widespread electrification will require significant and costly investment in transmission and distribution infrastructure, stakeholders say, no matter how rates are designed.

But they see time-of-use as a way to moderate that impact. These rates, Landry said, send a price signal that encourages electricity use at “off-peak” times when it will be easier and cheaper on the grid — nudging people, for example, to wait to charge their cars until near bedtime as opposed to right after work.

The solution is less straightforward for heat pumps, but Landry said pre-heating with a smart thermostat or using an electric thermal storage system could help limit the need for intensive heating during peak hours.

Landry and others agreed that helping customers access technology to manage their electricity use — and making it extremely simple to navigate related rate changes — will be vital to success.

“There needs to be careful consideration and effective implementation of consumer protections to make sure that it doesn’t create financial hardships for customers who are either low-income and/or have high energy burdens, in this time of high electricity prices,” said Phelps Turner, a senior attorney with the Conservation Law Foundation, which is an intervenor in the distribution-focused utilities commission proceeding.

Landry said he feels customers need “an action they can take in response to the price signal.” Otherwise, the rates “may simply penalize customers for using electricity when they have limited options,” he said, or “may be perceived as being burdensome,” creating a potential backlash.

Efficiency Maine, the quasi-governmental agency that runs energy rebate programs for the state, already offers a “load management” incentive of $50 upfront plus $50 a year for electric vehicle drivers who give the agency permission and electronic access to set their cars to charge automatically overnight by default.

“Study after study shows that the cost of our transition, very broadly — like the amount of generation, transmission, distribution that we need to fully electrify our economy — is dramatically lower the more load control you have associated with it,” said Ian Burnes, the agency’s director of strategic initiatives. He referenced a recently published draft study from ISO-New England, the regional grid manager, showing that transmission costs to accommodate increased load rise sharply with higher peak demand.

This means programs like Maine’s existing electric vehicle incentive will be important pairings to any future time-of-use rates, he said. “What we’re trying to build off of is to have devices that can respond to prices,” he said, “so the customer just has to say, ‘I’m just going to set this up once,’ and then the device does the work for them.”

With Central Maine Power’s initial time-of-use plans still in progress, there are open questions remaining around whether participation should be “opt-in,” and whether and how these rates might apply only to people who use relevant technologies or to all ratepayers.

Either way, customer education will be key, said the Conservation Law Foundation’s Turner — either ensuring that ratepayers understand the benefits of signing up if the rates are voluntary, or offering easy steps they can take to avoid penalties and achieve cost savings if the rates are automatically applied.

Burnes said he also hopes that more data-gathering by the utilities and agencies like his will help assess the “fairness” of current and future electrification-focused rates.

Smart meters will be one tool to achieve this, he said, with a goal of determining whether new rates only make power cheaper for some more than for others, or whether they create savings across the system.

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The post Maine eyes time-of-use rates to encourage cheaper home electrification appeared first on Energy News Beat.

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Reuters

New Fortress Energy (NASDAQ:NFE) and state energy company Pemex have terminated a deal to develop what could have been Mexico’s first deepwater natural gas project, Reuters reported Tuesday.

Source: Reuters

Pemex wants to continue with the development of the Lakach gas field in the Gulf of Mexico and is in talks with other companies, according to the report, which did not name the companies.

The Lakach field holds ~900B cf of natural gas, but rising costs and disagreements over how to develop it have hurt the venture, which already has cost more than $1B.

Last week, New Fortress (NFE) reportedly told the U.S. Department of Energy it had begun evaluating a fresh LNG onshore project in the Gulf state of Tamaulipas, and will soon begin operating a floating LNG export terminal off the Tamaulipas port of Altamira.

The post New Fortress Energy, Pemex scrap Mexican deepwater gas project appeared first on Energy News Beat.

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Oil Price

The Department of Energy has issued an invitation for bids for some 3 million barrels of crude that will go into the strategic petroleum reserve as part of refill efforts. In the announcement, the DoE twice noted that it had sold oil from the SPR at much higher prices than it is buying it now back at, with the difference standing at $95 per barrel for the sold oil and $79 and less for the barrels that have been bought for the refill since then.

Source: Reuters

“DOE has already purchased 4.8 million barrels for SPR replenishment for an average of less than $73 per barrel – far lower than the average of about $95 per barrel that SPR crude was sold for in 2022,” the announcement said.

Last year, to arrest an inexorable climb in retail fuel prices, the White House announced a release of 180 million barrels of crude oil from the strategic petroleum reserve. Critics warned the move would have a limited effect on prices but compromise the energy security of the country by reducing the level of crude in the SPR.

The release, alongside other factors such as low demand and fears of demand destruction, did help to bring both fuel and oil prices down. In late 2022, the administration said it was going to start buying crude to replenish the SPR when prices fall to around $70 per barrel.

This year, the White House kept oscillating between caution and a willingness to finally start refilling the SPR, amid pressure from Congress Republicans to maintain an adequate strategic reserve of oil.

Eventually, this led to the offer for the purchase of 6 million barrels of oil, which was made in early July, when oil prices were within the desired range of $67 to $72 per barrel.

The offer, however, was for sour crude, which has seen substantially tightened supply due to Russia sanctions and Saudi production cuts, and this has led to an even more marked increase in prices.

The latest announcement does not mention the sort of oil that the DoE wants to buy but it will be a while yet before the SPR is replenished, according to Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm. Earlier this year, Granholm said “The bottom line is we are going to replenish. The first term’s over in a year and a half. So, I’m not sure it’ll be fully replenished. But certainly, the plan is this term and the next term to be able to do that.”

By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com

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