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Why's a Big Red Tanker Drifting Near Boston?
- megaremote 8y agoThis is doing the same thing the Tesla Battery is doing in South Australia.
- dcplogic 8y agoThat's some next level daytrading.
- favorited 8y agoI remember when they opened that offshore LNG port – they built it when energy prices were through the roof, and everyone expected LNG imports to remain profitable. They built the port miles offshore because MA was banning harbor-side offloading of LNG due to concerns of accidents or attacks on LNG tankers. But by the time they completed it, hydraulic fracking had become so successful that LNG prices collapsed and no one wanted to import it anymore. https://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2013/01/23/offshore-gas-terminals-mass-bust-far/Qu8dyZzF6yBNAsDNaTT1ZJ/story.html https://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2013/01/23/offshore-gas...
- Nicholas_C 8y agoThe same thing happened with the Cheniere Energy in Louisiana but due to the location they were able to turn it into an export facility.
- Scoundreller 8y agoLucky. It’s not cheap/easy to convert from LNG import to LNG export.
- newnewpdro 8y ago"On Feb. 1, when Exemplar and Express were simultaneously berthed at the terminal, they sent enough fuel to run all of New England’s gas-fired generators for the day, according to Oliver Simpson, vice president of Excelerate’s commercial operations" This statement says nothing of what proportion of the tanker capacities was consumed in that day. Anyone know? It says nothing more than they fulfilled a single day of gas-fired generators needs, which by itself doesn't sound worthwhile.
- hindsightbias 8y agoShip capacity: https://excelerateenergy.com/fleet/ https://excelerateenergy.com/fleet/ The U.S. Energy Information Administration reported Tuesday that demand for natural gas in New England registered at 4.34 billion cubic feet per day and that the regional pipeline was operating at 77.1 percent capacity. The agency said that during a brief cold snap in January, "increased heating demand strained the natural gas system as natural gas consumption in the region, on January 21, 2019, reached their highest level this winter." https://www.bizjournals.com/boston/news/2019/02/19/natural-gas-hookups-off-limits-in-more-mass-towns.html https://www.bizjournals.com/boston/news/2019/02/19/natural-g...
- Scoundreller 8y agoShips capacities are 138k-150k m^3. Multiply by 35 to get cubic feet, and we get about 5m cubic feet per ship, or 1% of a day’s demand if my math is correct.
- singlow 8y agoHaven't checked the math but are you accounting for Liquid->Gas expansion?
- singlow 8y agoIf the figures for Boston's consumption are for gaseous methane and LNG expands 600x then you would have ~6 days supply.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- newnewpdro 8y ago"It takes up about 1/600th the volume of natural gas in the gaseous state" [1] So 600% by your calculation; 6 days? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquefied_natural_gas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquefied_natural_gas edit: darn singlow beat me to it :)
- thisisweirdok 8y agoThis is mildly unrelated, but living in New England and being stuck with shitty heating bills in January and February always makes me wonder what things would be like if we had enough common sense to move to regions of the country where heating isn't so vital. There's plenty of space out there. Sure excessive heat is an issue, but if my heat goes off when it's 2°F I would likely die within a day or two. Not in practice of course (thanks society!) just in theory. I can withstand 102° heat just fine if water is available and I'm a little careful.
- Simulacra 8y agoWe have that, but it's called Florida....
- Waterluvian 8y agoIsn't there a theory that winters forced human evolution because of the need for preparation? Not so relevant today. But an interesting thought.
- everdev 8y agoFormer Boston resident here. Moved to Hawaii after a blizzard and then to CA. The weather is wonderful here and we can drive up to the snow if we want. We still need heat in the winter but the temperatures aren't as intense. I do not Boston though just not the weather.
- smileysteve 8y agoI agree. I live in a condo in Georgia and 99% of my heating and cooling is performed by heat pump.
- thisisweirdok 8y agoHeat pumps keep getting better and better. I actually use one as my primary heat source in New Hampshire now. It's cheaper than oil or traditional electric resistance heating. Plus air conditioning in the summer is a nice bonus.
- tyingq 8y ago
- leeoniya 8y ago"The Northeast also can’t receive gas from other U.S. states by ship because of a 1920 law that prohibits foreign-flagged vessels from moving between American ports." wat?
- Simulacra 8y agoYep. The Jones Act
- Scoundreller 8y agoWell, natural gas can be shipped between states, it just has to by US flagged vessels. (There May not be any US-flagged LNG ships). “Can’t” isn’t true. It’s like saying “Walmart can’t ship goods between its US warehouses and US stores because foreign truckers aren’t allowed to ship interstate”. Well, duh.
- MrMorden 8y agoThe Jones Act also bans registering a vessel in the US if it wasn't built there. US shipbuilders are happy serving the captive market, so if you want one to build an LNG carrier it'll cost at least four times what Samsung charges. If the US had an open registry, there would be US-built LNG ships; there's no shortage of competitive American shipbuilders that make vessels small enough to be exempt. But the Jones Act pissed that away, as protectionist laws invariably do.
- wmoser 8y agoThis is sort of incorrect, it is possible to flag a foreign built ship under the American flag, it just isn’t eligible for Jones Act trade. There are a few reasons why a company might want to do this but for the most part, companies will choose a flag of connivence over American flag if they can sail between US ports anyways.
- mikeash 8y agoIf there are no qualifying LNG tankers then “can’t” is completely true.
- nck4222 8y ago>But as pipeline projects in New England face legal delays and public opposition They're talking about the northern pass, a proposed 200 mile pipeline from Canada, through the White mountain national forest in to New England. I know the region has energy and cost issues, but there has to be a better way than to put protected national land at risk. We also recently had a "catastrophic failure", that caused a dozen explosions in homes, killed one, and caused 40 house fires. It didn't rally a lot of support for natural gas expansion.
- mc32 8y agoTrue, but what really moves people is price (and better cooking experience, not that electrics aren’t much better than before). People write off those gas explosions to old infra problems.
- salawat 8y agoYou say that as if old infra problems are little more thsn a minor inconvenience, and not a ticking time bomb...
- danjayh 8y ago> there has to be a better way than to put protected national land at risk. Please explain where the high risk is ... explosions in the middle of nowhere aren't going to hurt much, and if their are leaks, the gas will simply vent into the atmosphere rather than cause the kind of damage that oil spills do. Seems like firing up coal plants in heavily populated regions (the current alternative) is worse. In terms of heat and power generation in cloudy regions, natural gas is vastly superior to everything except nuclear for cleanliness and co2/gigawatt-hour... and if cost is considered, it beats out nuclear too.
- lostlogin 8y agoBuilding and maintaining it is part of the equation too, and that will be destructive. Glad it’s not up to me to decide on.
- 8y ago
- craftyguy 8y agoHere's the non-blogspam original source: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-02-22/two-month-window-for-priciest-u-s-gas-keeps-this-tanker-adrift https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-02-22/two-month...
- nobrains 8y agoRelated: See this 13 minute video about how Qatar became really rich: https://youtu.be/yFpHUzNomlc https://youtu.be/yFpHUzNomlc (Summary: Its by developing technology for storing and exporting liquefied natural gas)