Saudi Arabia plans to expand its gas exploration program to add 50 trillion cubic feet of non-associated gas reserves by 2016 but will have to compile adequate data before considering a new concession round.
The kingdom has gas reserves of 242 trillion cubic feet, according to oil officials, making it the world’s fifth largest holder of proven gas reserves.
“We are embarking on a major exploration program across the kingdom ... This will come out with a massive amount of data that will be very important for us to learn what the potential is, what needs to be done and when,“ said petroleum ministry adviser Prince Faisal bin Turki bin Abdulaziz.
Officials said the areas included the Nafud Basin, northern Saudi Arabia, the Empty Quarter, the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf.
’Whether we have another offering will be determined by the information,’ the prince told an energy forum, Reuters reported.
Saudi Arabia opened its gas fields to international firms to meet rising demand for gas from its growing population and expanding industrial and petrochemical sectors. The upstream oil sector remains off-limits.
Four consortia of European, Russian and Chinese firms were awarded gas exploration blocs in the Empty Quarter in 2003 and 2004. The awards were pared down from an ambitious $25 billion initiative that originally included power and water desalination projects.
The consortia have said pre-existing data was limited and that commercial success depends on finding condensates due to the Saudi gas transfer price of 75 cents per million btu.
South Rub Al Khali (SRAK)--a venture between Saudi Aramco, Total SA and Royal Dutch Shell--said it would target condensate-rich gas spots.
’On the commercial side, we need to rely on condensates in order to make these opportunities attractive,’ SRAK CEO Patrick Allman-Ward said.
He said SRAK has an exit option after three consecutive dry wells but that it is ’determined’ to carry out the project.
“If the government sees that there are dry gas resources of a significant size that cannot be commercially developed because of a lack of condensate in it, I am sure it will be in the interest of the government and kingdom to arrive at some kind of solution to allow these to be developed commercially,“ he added.
SRAK drilled its first exploration well this year and a second is planned in early 2007. LUKSAR, a venture of Aramco and LUKOIL, drilled two wells and plans a third this year.
ENIREPSA Gas--which groups Eni, Repsol and Aramco--said it is drilling its first well. Sino Saudi Gas, a venture of Sinopec and Aramco, has drilled two wells and said there would be another two by year-end.
Khalid Al Falih, a senior vice-president at Aramco, said the consortia could start producing by 2011 or 2012, and added that theoretically could produce ’a couple of billion’ collectively.
Domestic sales gas demand is expected to rise to 14.5 billion cubic feet per day by 2030 from around 7 billion now.
Falih said Saudi Arabia may export gas in the future. ’We’re talking five to 10 years if we get positive results from our own exploration program and that of the IOC joint ventures.’
Abdulla Al Naim, vice-president exploration at Aramco, said the firm’s 2007-2011 development plan aimed for the drilling of more than 300 development wells and around 70 exploration wells.
’Aramco’s goal is to add at least an additional 50 trillion cubic feet of non-associated gas reserves. Saudi Arabia will then have gas reserves surpassing those of North America.
“In previous phases of gas and oil exploration nearly all our efforts were focused near existing facilities...Aramco is expanding its exploration program to reflect new gas demand.“
Aramco’s next grassroots gas development will be the offshore Karan field, where it aims to start a billion cubic feet per day of production in 2011. The Khursaniyah gas plant capacity will be doubled to 2 billion cfd to process Karan gas.

Wind turbines through history: from a Mediterranean mill to advanced designs (Google File Photo)

North Korea’s top energy policy is to develop wind energy in a three-stage project planned out to 2020, the country’s officials said in an Asian conference earlier this month.
They claimed they have turned to building hydraulic power stations after the construction of a light-water reactor promised by the international community was suspended.
North Korea is a participant in the Asian Energy Security Workshop sponsored by the San Francisco-based Nautilus Institute and Tsinghua University in China. This year’s meeting was in Beijing on Nov. 5-7, and papers from the conference were recently posted last week on the Nautilus Web site.
South Korea, Russia, China, Japan and Mongolia were also participants.
The paper submitted by the North Korean delegation said building up the wind energy sector is “considered a top priority for policymakers, technicians and managers“ in Pyongyang, Yonhapnews.co said.
North Korea would first construct a prototype wind farm with a 10-megawatt capacity by the year 2010, then build three main wind farms with a capacity of 100 megawatts by 2015, the paper said.
In the third stage ending in 2020, onshore and offshore wind farms would be built throughout the country, it said.
North Korea has already received outside assistance for its wind energy projects, including from Denmark, which provided wind turbines that were installed along the country’s west coast in 1986. The Nautilus Institute funded the installation of a standalone wind energy system in 1998.
The paper cited fund shortages and technological barriers in pursuing the policy, but said “these problems will be gradually solved through the correct policy of the DPRK“ and cooperation with the international community.
DPRK stands for the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, North Korea’s official name.
Ri Yong-ho, an official at the Pyongyang International Information Center of New Technology and Economy, said his country turned to hydraulic power stations after work on the light-water reactor was suspended.
Under the 1994 Geneva Agreed Framework, the North was to receive two reactors financed by the international community in exchange for freezing its nuclear activities. The agreement fell through after Pyongyang was accused of hiding a secret nuclear weapons program.
“To cope with this situation, the DPRK began to increase government investment in the construction of hydraulic power stations,“ Ri said in his presentation.
“Our future direction for securing energy is the technological upgrading of existing thermal power plants to increase energy conversion efficiency, further construction of hydraulic power stations to raise its proportion, and taking positive measures to develop and use renewable energy, including wind power,“ he said.
But no new plants are being built for the time being, Ri said.
The official said Pyongyang was also trying organic matter energy, particularly methane gas.
“For this purpose, professional research institutions for producing methane gas were organized and set to work to continuously renew and develop the technology of gasification and introduce it to productive sites,“ he said.

A new era for monitoring machinery is possible with the production of microgenerators that harvest energy from the vibrations of equipment-- meaning sensors no longer need wires or batteries.
“They turn the vibrations of the machine they are monitoring into an electric current to power both the sensor and the wireless transmitter which sends the data to the condition monitoring system,“ said Roy Freeland, chief executive of Southampton-based Perpetuum.
Until now most sensors have had to get their energy either through wiring or from a battery. It can be costly and inconvenient to retrofit wired sensors, and there are also expenses associated with replacing batteries.
Perpetuum’s combined microgenerator and sensor unit doesn’t need those conventional power sources so it can simply be attached by magnet or studs to machinery. ’It is truly wireless,’ said Freeland, according to E4engineering.com.

Detects Deviation
The parasitic unit performs a neat trick. The microgenerator turns the energy from the vibrations of its host into an electrical current that powers a sensor. This detects any deviation from the signature frequency of the same host--a change that could indicate the development of a fault.
The unit converts kinetic energy from vibration of equipment running at mains frequency (50 or 60Hz) and can generate up to 100µW when attached to a surface exhibiting a minimum vibration magnitude of 16mg between 59Hz and 60Hz. This is sufficient to power a wireless transmitter sending up to six kilobytes of critical condition monitoring data every few minutes, or smaller amounts of data, such as temperature readings, several times a second.
Perpetuum, a spin-out from Southampton University, received a patent for its technology this month. It has been running trials of its pre-production units since last year, but has now started full production of more powerful models following an order from a major international oil company. The new unit, the PMG17, is capable of generating useful energy from levels of vibration that are 35 percent lower than previously possible, and across a large bandwidth of vibration frequencies.
Each unit is 53mm in diameter and 53mm deep. It contains a static coil and a rare earth magnet. ’The university team investigated the potential of using piezo-electric materials but found they couldn’t beat a coil and magnet,’ said Freeland. While others have tried similar designs, Perpetuum has succeeded by damping the movement of the magnet in a clever way.
“We have combined mechanical, electro-mechanical and electronic damping in a delicate balance to optimize the movement of the magnet and get the best out of the microgenerator,“ said Freeland. While the arrangement of the components inside the PMG17 are a closely-guarded secret, a patent awarded to Perpetuum and published this October shows the magnet as part of an armature whose pivot passes through a coil. Although the patent does not specify its function, a fixed block of high-permeability material placed between two arms of the armature could be tuned continually to damp movement.
Perpetuum wants a slice of a large and growing market. Shipment of radio frequency/microwave wireless products for industrial monitoring and control applications in north America alone will increase from £81m in 2004 at a compound annual growth rate of 36.6 percent to £221m in 2007, according to a report published last year.

’Fit and Forget’
The company believes its products will compete favorably with both wired and battery-powered units. ’It won’t compete with a battery unit on price, but it will when the cost of replacing batteries is taken into account,’ said Freeland. ’Ours is fit and forget’.
One Perpetuum package, including support, costs about £1,200, though prices could fall to as little as £100 with sufficient volume. “It has been reckoned that the wiring of a sensor in a plant costs up to £3,000, or 10 times as much in an explosion risk area.“
An earlier version of the technology, the PMG7 (The Engineer, 27 February) has been proven in a series of field trials with Yorkshire Water, the US Navy and a major international oil company. The trials have been completed using a remote sensing module from Perpetuum’s US partner, RLW of State College, Pennsylvania.

The City of Millbrae recently completed a new facility at its Water Pollution Control Plant that will turn inedible kitchen grease from local restaurants into biogas--generating renewable energy to treat the city’s wastewater. The new system, engineered and installed by Chevron Corporation’s Energy Solutions unit, includes a grease-receiving station and an expanded cogenerator.
More than 3,000 gallons of restaurant grease--the kind washed from grills and pans--will be delivered to the plant each day by grease-hauling companies, which otherwise would pay a city fee for its disposal. Microorganisms in the plant’s digester tanks eat the grease and other organic matter, naturally producing methane gas to fuel the plant’s new 250-kilowatt microturbine cogenerator to produce electricity for wastewater treatment, Solaraccess.com said.
Meanwhile, excess heat produced by the cogenerator warms the digester tanks to their optimum temperature for methane production.
The grease and other organic matter will produce enough biogas at the plant to generate about 1.7 million kilowatt hours annually, which will meet 80 percent of the plant’s power needs and reduce its electricity purchases significantly.
“This project clearly demonstrates that cities can develop renewable energy economically, with multiple benefits to urban communities,“ said Jim Davis, president of Chevron Energy Solutions. “By applying proven technologies and looking at the entire waste stream in new ways, the City of Millbrae has cost effectively upgraded its facilities, reduced its operating costs, created new revenue and solved environmental challenges all at the same time.“
Restaurants produce an average of 14 pounds of inedible grease per capita annually--a total of nearly 4.2 billion pounds each year in the United States alone. Much of this grease is disposed of in landfills, where it releases methane--a potent greenhouse gas--as it decomposes, sometimes directly to the atmosphere.
“This innovative project brings new meaning to the term ’sustainable development,’“ said Millbrae Mayor Robert Gottschalk. “Through our partnership with Chevron Energy Solutions, we’re taking an urban waste and turning it into an asset for the city and the environment.“
The total cost of the project, $5.5 million, was reduced by about $200,000 with a rebate awarded through the state of California’s Self-Generation Incentive Program administered by Pacific Gas and Electric Company. The net amount, along with maintenance costs, is being funded entirely by savings from the new system and, therefore, will have no effect on the city’s wastewater treatment rates.
“This is the only wastewater treatment plant in the US to receive and process inedible grease in a self-funding, purpose-built system that successfully addresses so many challenges simultaneously,“ said Dick York, superintendent of the Millbrae plant. “It’s a complete solution that could be adopted in many cities around the country.“
Since 2000, Chevron Corporation, through its various subsidiaries, has spent more than $1.5 billion on renewable energy projects including geothermal, hydrogen, biofuels and advanced batteries as well as wind and solar technologies.

By 2010, the Central Highlands is expected to become a leading hydro-electric power hub in Vietnam with a total capacity of 5,000 MW, or one-third of the current national electricity capacity.
The target was set by the national power development strategy until 2010, which called for efforts to make use of all water resources to build both major plants and small-sized stations.
Along the Se San river alone, which ranks third in hydroelectricity potential in Viet Nam, a total of six major and medium-sized hydro-power projects, with a combined capacity of 1,796 MW, will be built, according to Governmental planning for the river.
Under the plan, the Se San 3A hydropower project is to inaugurate the first turbine by late November and the second by February of 2007. The Pleikrong hydroelectricity project is set to become operational by February 2008 while the Se San IV plant will generate electricity by May 2009.
Along the Se Re Pok, there will be six hydro-power projects designed with a combined capacity of 650 MW and a total output of 2.8 billion kWh per year, while 10 other projects with a combined capacity of 669 MW and a production output of 2.6 billion kWh/year will be built along the Ba river running across Gia Lai, Dac Lac and Phu Yen provinces, Vneconomy.com said.
The plan for Dong Nai river has set an ambitious target of 16 hydroelectricity projects with a total capacity of 3,000 MW. So far nine projects, with a design capacity of 1,610 MW and annual output of 6.4 billion KWh, are under construction.
Plans for small-sized hydro-power stations have also been set up for the region. Surveys have shown that in Dac Lac province alone, up to 101 locations are suitable for hydro-power stations, of which 11 locations have been chosen to start projects soon.
The province has so far built over 10 such hydro-power stations with a combined capacity of 15,000 KW.
The region has so far run two hydroelectricity plants, the Yaly with a capacity of 720MW and the Se San III 280 MW. The Yaly plant in the past six years produced over 18 billion KWh and the Se San III plant generated over 260 million KWh up to late September this year after just several months of operation. The inauguration of two turbines in the Se San III factory in mid-2006 was seen to alleviate a dire shortage of electricity which often hits the northern region during the summer.
The construction of hydropower projects has provided thousands of jobs for local workers, including ethnic minority groups. Reservoirs at hydro-power plants have contributed to increasing forest humidity in the region, improving local dry soil and abnormal changes in climate. These environmental improvements have helped much in cultivation and created favorable conditions for aquaculture, said economists.