Yeah, That's The Ticket; Russia Announces Vast New Arctic Oil Project - 100 Million Tons Oil/Year

[hatrack]

EDIT

In February, Sechin promised Putin that the scheme would create a "new oil and gas province" on Siberia's Taymyr peninsula, the northernmost part of the Asian continent. The complete project will represent a total investment of 10,000 billion rubles (CAD$145 billion), including two airports and 15 "industry towns".

The project has also been forecast to create 130,000 jobs and allow access to estimated reserves of around five billion tonnes of oil. The construction alone will require 400,000 workers, Sechin said.

Last week Rosneft announced the sale of 10 percent of the project to Singapore's Trafigura group, without mentioning a price. The Russian group had previously said that there was interest in the project from India.

Sechin said the Arctic endeavour would eventually produce 100 million tonnes of oil per year. Between now and 2024 he said that 30 million tonnes would be sent from the Arctic along the so-called Northern Sea route connecting the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific,

EDIT/END

https://www.ctvnews.ca/climate-and-environment/russian-oil-giant-announces-start-of-vast-arctic-project-1.5204507

Ed. - Roughly, this would be not quite 310 million tons of new carbon emissions every year just from burning the oil sold once full-scale production is reached. It wouldn't include impact from construction, transportation or other project aspects.

From the BP Statistical Review -

The previous method for calculating CO2emissions was constructed by applying a singleemission factor to each of oil, gas and coal, as reported in the footnote of the table ‘Carbon Dioxide Emissions’. Those emission factors were based on standard global average conversion factors compiled on the basis of average carbon content: oil at 73,300 kg CO2per TJ (3.07 tonnes per tonne of oil equivalent); natural gas at 56,100 kg CO2per TJ (2.35 tonnes per tonne of oil equivalent); and coal at 94,600 kg CO2per TJ (3.96 tonnes per tonne of oil equivalent).

https://www.bp.com/content/dam/bp/business-sites/en/global/corporate/pdfs/energy-economics/statistical-review/bp-stats-review-2019-carbon-emissions-methodology.pdf

[Thekaspervote]

1. To whom and where do they think they are going to sell that oil?

Expensive to drill there with slim profits, larger companies, BP, Exxon don’t see any profits in it.
To say nothing of the oil glut

[exboyfil]

3. Take the middle eastern oil off line?

[Thekaspervote]

4. Oh I'm sure that's a big part of the plan

I have a BIL that is upper middle management for BP out of the Chicago headquarters.. he just shakes his head

[NickB79]

7. They're betting on rapidly rising demand for plastics offsetting lower fuel demand

https://in.reuters.com/article/us-petrochemicals-iea/rising-use-of-plastics-to-drive-oil-demand-to-2050-iea-idINKCN1ME2QD

They're probably right

[CousinIT]

2. Maxine Waters said Trump-Russia interests converged in OIL.

Maybe she was right.

Of course there are multiple other areas of convergence too (authoritarian dictatorship and destruction of the US gov't for instance).

[NNadir]

5. Maybe they should announce that all that oil will be invested as embodied energy for wind turbines.

Last edited Fri Nov 27, 2020, 11:11 AM - Edit history (1)

Then we could all cheer.

What I see when I see a wind turbine (Numbers Don't Lie) (Vaclav Smil, IEEE Spectrum Volume: 53, Issue: 3, March 2016)

...Large trucks bring steel and other raw materials to the site, earth-moving equipment beats a path to otherwise inaccessible high ground, large cranes erect the structures, and all these machines burn diesel fuel. So do the freight trains and cargo ships that convey the materials needed for the production of cement, steel, and plastics. For a 5-megawatt turbine, the steel alone averages [pdf] 150 metric tons for the reinforced concrete foundations, 250 metric tons for the rotor hubs and nacelles (which house the gearbox and generator), and 500 metric tons for the towers.

If wind-generated electricity were to supply 25 percent of global demand by 2030 (forecast [pdf] to reach about 30 petawatt-hours), then even with a high average capacity factor of 35 percent, the aggregate installed wind power of about 2.5 terawatts would require roughly 450 million metric tons of steel. And that’s without counting the metal for towers, wires, and transformers for the new high-voltage transmission links that would be needed to connect it all to the grid...

...A 5-MW turbine has three roughly 60-meter-long airfoils, each weighing about 15 metric tons. They have light balsa or foam cores and outer laminations made mostly from glass-fiber-reinforced epoxy or polyester resins. The glass is made by melting silicon dioxide and other mineral oxides in furnaces fired by natural gas. The resins begin with ethylene derived from light hydrocarbons, most commonly the products of naphtha cracking, liquefied petroleum gas, or the ethane in natural gas.

The final fiber-reinforced composite embodies on the order of 170 GJ/t. Therefore, to get 2.5 TW of installed wind power by 2030, we would need an aggregate rotor mass of about 23 million metric tons, incorporating the equivalent of about 90 million metric tons of crude oil. And when all is in place, the entire structure must be waterproofed with resins whose synthesis starts with ethylene. Another required oil product is lubricant, for the turbine gearboxes, which has to be changed periodically during the machine’s two-decade lifetime.

Undoubtedly, a well-sited and well-built wind turbine would generate as much energy as it embodies in less than a year. However, all of it will be in the form of intermittent electricity—while its production, installation, and maintenance remain critically dependent on specific fossil energies. Moreover, for most of these energies—coke for iron-ore smelting, coal and petroleum coke to fuel cement kilns, naphtha and natural gas as feedstock and fuel for the synthesis of plastics and the making of fiberglass, diesel fuel for ships, trucks, and construction machinery, lubricants for gearboxes—we have no nonfossil substitutes that would be readily available on the requisite large commercial scales...

30 petawatt-hours is about 10 exajoules, on a planet where humanity consumes over 600 exajoules of energy per year.

Wind turbines last less than 20 years on average before needing replacement.

God Bless Putin's Oil, no?

[Finishline42]

6. Please research 'repowering windmills'

The biggest issue with windmills isn't a 20 yr life expectancy, it's that newer windmills are better. Companies have come up with bigger models, models that make more electricity for the given wind speeds, etc.

The windfarm of today does just rot like early 1980 ill planned versions. They repower. Here's a couple of examples...

Two energy projects in Minnesota are putting a whole new spin on aging in place.

Longroad Energy is repowering a pair of utility-scale wind farms that were developed more than a decade ago. The purpose is to implement turbines improved for maximum annual wind energy production and extend the service life of the wind farms.

“We are grateful for the support of the project landowners and communities,” said Paul Gaynor, CEO of Longroad in a statement. “This is one of the first repowering projects in Minnesota, so there was not a lot of precedent to rely on. The regulatory community was constructive and supportive.”

The Boston-based renewable energy developer and operator acquired the assets three years ago. Sited among the agricultural landscape of southwestern Minnesota, Jeffers Wind Energy Center and the Community Wind North farm were placed in service in 2008 and 2011, respectively. The 20 turbines and infrastructure of Jeffers Wind weave through 2,560 acres of privately-owned and leased lands. Community Wind North knits across 2,400 acres with its 12 turbines and infrastructure.

Longroad Energy closed on $128 million in construction financing with KeyBank and HSBC, and construction is expected to begin in second quarter 2020 and take up to eight months. The repowered sites will be operational by the end of the year. The turnkey repowering, equipment, construction and maintenance will be performed by Vestas. The “energy industry’s global partner on sustainable energy solutions,” Vestas is estimating a post-repower, 30-year useful life.

After Longroad’s repower projects, the two wind farms and their 32 repowered turbines combined will provide 70 megawatts of renewable energy in the state. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, Minnesota ranks fourth in the top five states with the oldest-average age of operating wind turbines, between 12 and 16 years.

Repowering is an industry term, in some measure likened to retrofitting or redevelopment. The repowering process can encompass a full activity, such as dismantling and replacing an earlier project’s entire fleet of project infrastructure in the site boundary; or, a partial activity of replacing only select turbines and towers or components and associated facilities. Repowering can also involve interconnection infrastructure with the power grid.

By increasing energy production, Longroad Energy’s repower projects are anticipated to generate increases in production tax revenues for Cottonwood and Lincoln counties.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/tompfister/2020/01/30/repowering-wind-farms-for-their-second-act/?sh=1a3939132763