Energy Discussion

[Randy Daytona]

A bit surprising, but it’s still helpful.

The most efficient energy-wise speed to move goods is just about as slow as possible, but things have to get there, so there ends up being a time constraint.

Within that time constraint, you want to move goods at as constant of a speed as possible over the route to keep aero drag (dependent on speed) low. All the tracks, even out west, have ups and downs (1% grade being considered steep) and they have varying speed restrictions going into curves and towns, etc. There are single track segments where the train has to stop to deconflict with oncoming traffic. Every one of those decels and down grades offer energy to be grabbed and reused. It adds up to quite a lot getting lost right now.

Interesting stuff - is there anything else you would like to add or websites you could point us to?

Currently on vacation but looking forward to calling a classmate who is a locomotive engineer for CSX and get his input as well.

Speaking of locomotive engineers, here is a video of perhaps the most famous one of all:

And as my son gets older, I get to build a train set: is it still HO gauge and N gauge for modellers?

 

[Randy Daytona]

Interesting article from David Frum at The Atlantic.

How to Disable Putin’s Energy Weapon

Only by integrating Europe into a better network of energy security can NATO truly protect its members.

www.theatlantic.com

A few highlights:

Western Europe is facing sharp rises in electricity prices this winter. Through the autumn and early winter, wholesale electricity contracts traded for more than 300 euros per megawatt-hour almost everywhere on the continent; in France and Switzerland, prices reached nearly 400 euros. Contracts in the United States at the same time normally traded in the $20–$35 range, and rarely exceeded $100.

China alone burns as much coal as the rest of the world put together. Over the next four years, China intends to add more coal-burning output than the entire installed capacity of all U.S. non-hydroelectric renewables combined…Even as the developed world is reducing its coal consumption, global coal consumption is continuing to rise fast—up 9 percent just in 2021.

 

[Randy Daytona]

A bit surprising, but it’s still helpful.

The most efficient energy-wise speed to move goods is just about as slow as possible, but things have to get there, so there ends up being a time constraint.

Within that time constraint, you want to move goods at as constant of a speed as possible over the route to keep aero drag (dependent on speed) low. All the tracks, even out west, have ups and downs (1% grade being considered steep) and they have varying speed restrictions going into curves and towns, etc. There are single track segments where the train has to stop to deconflict with oncoming traffic. Every one of those decels and down grades offer energy to be grabbed and reused. It adds up to quite a lot getting lost right now.

Any thoughts on this? I assume they are talking about switching locomotives (similar to a tugboat), not long haul?

Battery-powered trains are picking up speed

Electric locomotives could cut emissions of greenhouse gases, toxic pollutants.

arstechnica.com

 

[Griz882]

Any thoughts on this? I assume they are talking about switching locomotives (similar to a tugboat), not long haul?

Battery-powered trains are picking up speed

Electric locomotives could cut emissions of greenhouse gases, toxic pollutants.

arstechnica.com

I find it easy to dismiss any article that uses the word “spew” while failing to note the actual pollution-per-mile-per-ton shipped. Beyond that, a recharge at every 150 miles simply won’t work. It takes under 15 minutes to change rail crews…I rather doubt they can recharge in that timeframe. Now, if they figure out a way (and it shouldn’t be hard) to bring a charge to the train while it is traveling like a “third rail” they might have something. But then again….that too is the obvious solution for interstates as well - trickle charge the car from the road extending the range by hours.

 

[taxi1]

Any thoughts on this? I assume they are talking about switching locomotives (similar to a tugboat), not long haul?

Battery-powered trains are picking up speed

Electric locomotives could cut emissions of greenhouse gases, toxic pollutants.

arstechnica.com

Blending them into diesel electric trains will be the best future. The great thing about a battery locomotive is regenerative braking. On any kind of hilly route you can grab that energy that was going to be turned into heat, and use it on the next hill. Big gain in efficiency for a route. Also accels and decels You can also use it to boost for steep sections.

Tenders will make their way back, but they will be battery tenders instead of coal tenders. Swap out the battery tenders and keep going. Zip-zip.

Also been talk about hybrid in the sense of using the overhead power where available, then battery where not.

 

[Randy Daytona]

Happened upon this article on the business end of railroads and subsequent bottlenecks - thought some might be interested.

How America’s Supply Chains Got Railroaded

Rail deregulation led to consolidation, price-gouging, and a variant of just-in-time unloading that left no slack in the system.

prospect.org

Of the surviving seven Class I railroads, CSX and Norfolk Southern have a duopoly on traffic east of Chicago, while Union Pacific and BNSF have a duopoly on traffic west of Chicago. Canadian Pacific, Canadian National, and Kansas City Southern run much traffic going north-south through the Midwest. Even so, according to the Rail Customer Coalition, a shippers’ trade association, most train stations (78 percent in 2012) only have one railroad serving them. Most places rely on a monopoly railroad.

 

[Griz882]

Happened upon this article on the business end of railroads and subsequent bottlenecks - thought some might be interested.

How America’s Supply Chains Got Railroaded

Rail deregulation led to consolidation, price-gouging, and a variant of just-in-time unloading that left no slack in the system.

prospect.org

Of the surviving seven Class I railroads, CSX and Norfolk Southern have a duopoly on traffic east of Chicago, while Union Pacific and BNSF have a duopoly on traffic west of Chicago. Canadian Pacific, Canadian National, and Kansas City Southern run much traffic going north-south through the Midwest. Even so, according to the Rail Customer Coalition, a shippers’ trade association, most train stations (78 percent in 2012) only have one railroad serving them. Most places rely on a monopoly railroad.

Nothing new…

 

[number9]

Happened upon this article on the business end of railroads and subsequent bottlenecks - thought some might be interested.

How America’s Supply Chains Got Railroaded

Rail deregulation led to consolidation, price-gouging, and a variant of just-in-time unloading that left no slack in the system.

prospect.org

Of the surviving seven Class I railroads, CSX and Norfolk Southern have a duopoly on traffic east of Chicago, while Union Pacific and BNSF have a duopoly on traffic west of Chicago. Canadian Pacific, Canadian National, and Kansas City Southern run much traffic going north-south through the Midwest. Even so, according to the Rail Customer Coalition, a shippers’ trade association, most train stations (78 percent in 2012) only have one railroad serving them. Most places rely on a monopoly railroad.

There's a really good newsletter/blog on monopolies here: https://mattstoller.substack.com/

 

[taxi1]

Happened upon this article on the business end of railroads and subsequent bottlenecks - thought some might be interested.

How America’s Supply Chains Got Railroaded

Rail deregulation led to consolidation, price-gouging, and a variant of just-in-time unloading that left no slack in the system.

prospect.org

Of the surviving seven Class I railroads, CSX and Norfolk Southern have a duopoly on traffic east of Chicago, while Union Pacific and BNSF have a duopoly on traffic west of Chicago. Canadian Pacific, Canadian National, and Kansas City Southern run much traffic going north-south through the Midwest. Even so, according to the Rail Customer Coalition, a shippers’ trade association, most train stations (78 percent in 2012) only have one railroad serving them. Most places rely on a monopoly railroad.

It's a strange business, the way the railroads get these monopolies. Very close control on their operating data.

The new big thing in the railroads is Operating Ratio, the ratio of money in to money out. If they can increase the operating ratio by dumping low profitability routes, they do it. If they can mortgage the future by offloading their R&D groups, they do it. Their capacity is kind of shrinking as they try to go super-efficient on the OR.

Tid-bit I never knew, the telecom SPRINT is based on Southern Pacific Railroad INTernal Net comms. Because they owned the land they could run the cables along their rail lines, especially fiber.

 

[Randy Daytona]

I'll just post this here. The US could play a MAJOR part in supporting our allies energy needs without them having to rely on Russia if we could only get Washington to get onboard. Simply put, we need to stop attacking oil and gas companies domestically and allow them to continue to grow and market our natural resources to the world (in the form of LNG). Getting rid of coal burning power plants in places like India and China will have a faster impact to carbon emissions than giving people a tax credit to buy an electric vehicle.

I listened, for 3 HOURS!, to a energy market professional this past week talk about Hydrogen as a replacement for natural gas since it doesn't contain carbon. However, the cost, especially for "green" hydrogen, is like 20x natural gas and since it doesn't have the same energy content as an equivalent about of natural gas it takes considerably MORE hydrogen to get the same energy output. I was not convinced it is a viable alternative to natural gas and neither were several of my colleagues also in the meeting.

I said it earlier, in 2021 the US saw a dramatic increase in NG futures and in Europe is was worse. However, the US has seen a significant retraction in gas prices, futures are about 40% below where they were just a few months ago. Producers, especially in the Marcellus, have ramped up production to take advantage of prices and a warm start to winter all helped contribute to downward pressure on prices. The weather forecast has a lot to do with prices, and Nov-Dec have been well below normal for most of the country (especially the Mid-Atlantic and East Coast). January is supposed to see a double digit increase in demand relative to Jan 2020, but the market isn't pricing that in at the moment.

Saw that the British are turning away Russian LNG tankers - any idea if Massachusetts needs LNG again this year (because they refuse to build pipelines) and, if so, will they buy it from Russia again?

Also, what are you hearing about offshore oil and gas leases as the Biden administration has previously attacked domestic oil and gas production (and jobs) while encouraging Saudi - and now possibly Iran - to increase output?

 

[Random8145]

Happened upon this article on the business end of railroads and subsequent bottlenecks - thought some might be interested.

How America’s Supply Chains Got Railroaded

Rail deregulation led to consolidation, price-gouging, and a variant of just-in-time unloading that left no slack in the system.

prospect.org

Of the surviving seven Class I railroads, CSX and Norfolk Southern have a duopoly on traffic east of Chicago, while Union Pacific and BNSF have a duopoly on traffic west of Chicago. Canadian Pacific, Canadian National, and Kansas City Southern run much traffic going north-south through the Midwest. Even so, according to the Rail Customer Coalition, a shippers’ trade association, most train stations (78 percent in 2012) only have one railroad serving them. Most places rely on a monopoly railroad.

I think the article has a bit of a leftward slant in saying about how politicians have "actually valued child care with real support," giving the impression that price controls to address inflation would be an acceptable thing, and in not stating the drawbacks of the Interstate Commerce Commission, which is that it allowed the railroad companies to establish a cartel, something they had been trying to do before its creation and kept failing at due to market forces.

 

[Flash]

Also, what are you hearing about offshore oil and gas leases as the Biden administration has previously attacked domestic oil and gas production (and jobs) while encouraging Saudi - and now possibly Iran - to increase output?

Has the current administration really 'attacked' domestic oil and gas production? They have cancelled or delayed (right terms?) leases and an import pipeline, both of which take years if not decades to bear fruit, but current production is humming along as much as the oil and gas industry wants it to.

Which brings about a bigger point, maybe the folks who have been 'attacking' oil and gas production expansion actually have a point in that we should move away from fossil fuels to begin with. I love how many advocates of oil and gas production expansion have great ideas on how to expand oil and gas production in the 'shorter' term, taking those years or decades to bear fruit, but are hostile to many things conservation-wise that would reduce our consumption at the same time.

Coupled with the fact that many folks remain ignorant that oil prices are determined by the international market, we ain't going to drill our way out of gas prices and Russia will likely find a market for its oil anyways kind of makes much of debate on this flawed from the start.

 

[Randy Daytona]

Good interview of Daniel Yergin by Ezra Klein in today’s NYT.

Opinion | How Energy Markets Are Shaping Putin’s Invasion — and the World

Gas prices are spiking. The economic historian Daniel Yergin explains what that means for geopolitics — and climate change.

www.nytimes.com

 

[ABMD]

Saw that the British are turning away Russian LNG tankers - any idea if Massachusetts needs LNG again this year (because they refuse to build pipelines) and, if so, will they buy it from Russia again?

Also, what are you hearing about offshore oil and gas leases as the Biden administration has previously attacked domestic oil and gas production (and jobs) while encouraging Saudi - and now possibly Iran - to increase output?

Yes, but the LNG was coming in from the Caribbean this time (Trinidad & Tobago).

The issue with domestic production, and I read @Flash's comments above, although it does take years to complete a pipeline or expand production, it's the messaging that is being sent. The message is clear; new leases or permits will not be approved. Although there are existing permits that are approved, doesn't mean all those permits are able to produce anything.

 

[wink]

Has the current administration really 'attacked' domestic oil and gas production?

The message is clear; new leases or permits will not be approved. Although there are existing permits that are approved, doesn't mean all those permits are able to produce anything.

Attacked is a strong word I wouldn't use, but as @ABMD points out the message is clear. In fact, they have said so. If new leases and permits are not issued, and the ones bragged about as available and unclaimed are not likely to produce, there is no way for US production to increase significantly. And that IS because of Administration policy. They are holding production in check to increase prices and encourage alternative fuels. And of course, make their radical green voters happy. And because those policies may change, next month or after the nest election, their isn't enough certainty for oil and gas producers to make long term investments. Maybe a fair policy for some, but not in a geopolitical emergency and threatening inflation.

I agree that most Americans have no idea how gas prices are effected at the pump. Too many Americans don't know anything about basic economics. Even global commodities respond to basic supply and demand. More oil no matter where it comes from will add to the supply and have an effect on prices. Lower prices not only are good for America now, it is horrible for the Russians. Two birds as they say. But America can't increase production now due the effect of policies and previous decisions on infrastructure. If increasing production would not benefit the US and our allies in sanctions, the President would not be talking to Venezuela, Iran and Saudi Arabia. Conditions should be set so, even if in the future, the USA can do what Biden is asking foreign nations to do for us.