Statoil's facility on Melkoya island, Norway, which receives natural gas from beneath the Arctic Ocean.

For a quarter-century, energy executives were tantalized by vast quantities of natural gas in one of the world’s most inhospitable places--off Norway’s northern coast, beneath the Arctic Ocean.
Bitter winds and fierce snowstorms lash the region, located 90 miles, or 145 kilometers, from the country’s shoreline, Iht.com said.
The sun disappears for two months a year. No oil company knew how to operate in such a harsh environment.
But Norway has finally solved the problem. The other day, on Melkoya island just offshore Hammerfest, a giant yellow flame illuminated the sky. It was just a temporary flare for excess gas, but it signaled a new era in energy production.
Across the bay from this small fishing village, where reindeer wander the streets, one of the world’s most advanced natural gas plants is coming to life. Within weeks, natural gas will start crossing the ocean in specially designed ships, feeding into the pipeline network for the eastern coast of the United States.
As global demand soars and prices climb, energy companies are going to the ends of the earth to find new supplies.
In Kazakhstan, petroleum engineers are braving wild temperature swings in the shallow waters of the Caspian Sea to tap the biggest oil discovery of the past 30 years.
They are drilling wells six miles deep in the Gulf of Mexico. And on the island of Sakhalin, in eastern Russia, they have drilled horizontal wells through miles of rock to produce oil from a stretch of ocean beset by giant icebergs.
But as the industry extends its reach, the quest is becoming more arduous. The cost of producing new oil and gas is rising fast, and companies are plagued by worsening delays.
According to a recent study, discovery and development costs--a leading indicator for the industry--tripled between 1999 and 2006, to nearly $15 a barrel. Last year alone, companies spent $200 billion developing new energy projects worldwide, according to the study by two consulting firms, John Herold and Harrison Lovegrove. That sum is bigger than the economies of 147 countries.
There is plenty of oil and gas still in the ground, energy executives say. But global consumption is rising so fast they must keep looking for new sources. Despite concerns around the world about global warming and the role of fossil fuels in causing it, government specialists project that global oil and gas demand will jump about 50 percent in the next 25 years.
At the same time, the big discoveries of the past three decades, like the North Sea and Alaska’s North Slope, are drying up.
But those fields are on land. The Norwegian field is the first Arctic project to tap oil and gas reserves far offshore, in water depths exceeding 1,000 feet, or 305 meters, and where traditional exploration methods would be too costly.
The natural gas field, 340 miles north of the Arctic Circle beneath a stretch of ocean known as the Barents Sea, is called Snow White--Snohvit in Norwegian, where energy projects are named after mythical characters. Though it was discovered in 1981, oil executives long considered Snohvit out of reach, because of the Barents Sea’s shifting ice packs, brutal waves and extreme cold.
Another big problem the engineers faced here was that Snohvit was located hundreds of miles from Norway’s traditional pipeline network.
Over the years, Statoil considered many ways to get at the natural gas, including massive offshore platforms armored against the waves, but discarded them as too costly. Building a huge undersea pipeline that would take the natural gas south along the country’s long coastline was also out of the question.
Statoil engineers eventually came up with an ingenious solution. They installed production equipment directly on the seafloor, with no rigs breaking the surface. The wellheads are linked by 90 miles of pipe to a small island just off the coastal town of Hammerfest. An antifreeze is injected into the pipes to prevent the natural gas from clogging on its way to shore. On the island, called Melkoya, Statoil built a processing facility to separate the brew of natural gas, oil, water and carbon dioxide that flows out of the field.
The natural gas is then cooled to minus 260 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 162 Celsius), shrinking it 600 times and turning it into a liquid that can be shipped in tankers. The carbon dioxide that is collected is pumped back into the field.
Once the plant becomes fully operational, later this year, a tanker will load here every five to six days. It then takes about 20 days to reach the US and come back, and about 12 days for a return voyage to markets in southern Europe.
The field is so large that it is expected to supply as much as 10 percent of the natural gas demand on the US East Coast by late next year.

Clean coal technology, involving trapping carbon in waste gases from coal-fired power plants and disposing it underground, may not be commercially viable until 2025, CLP Holdings Ltd.’s Australian unit said.
Generators such as CLP’s TRUenergy Pty. unit that use brown coal, or lignite, as a fuel, need to invest in other technologies to help reduce gases blamed for global warming, Richard McIndoe, managing director of the Melbourne-based company said today at a conference in Melbourne, Bloomberg said.
Companies around the world are looking for ways to curb emissions of carbon dioxide to meet standards imposed by governments trying to slow climate change. Brown coal has a higher moisture content than black coal, making it a more polluting fuel. Technologies to dry brown coal before using it to generate power and to improve boiler technology are more advanced than so-called clean coal, McIndoe said.
“We’re not going to wait for one end-to-end solution,“ McIndoe said at the Auswind 2007 wind energy conference in Melbourne. “We can start implementing the coal-drying technology now, we can look at improving boiler capabilities to improve efficiency over the next five to 10 years.“
TRUenergy owns the 1,480-megawatt Yallourn brown coal-fired power plant in Australia’s Victoria state, which emits about 14 million metric tons a year of carbon dioxide. The company has a target to cut carbon emissions by 35 percent of 1990 levels by 2035, and by 60 percent by 2050.
TRUenergy, which owns a 50 percent stake in the Roaring 40s Renewable Energy Pty. wind energy unit, intends to invest in other renewable energy technologies to help meet the emissions targets, McIndoe said. It’s also building a natural gas-fired power plant in New South Wales state.
Clean coal, also known as carbon capture and storage, won’t contribute “substantially“ to reducing emissions from power generation before 2020, said Steve Sawyer, secretary general of the Brussels-based Global Wind Energy Council. The first commercial plant, a 500-megawatt unit planned by RWE AG, is due to start up by 2014, he said.
Australia, which uses coal for about 85 percent of its electricity generation, in May reported a 1.3 percent annual increase in greenhouse gas emissions from power generation and transport in 2005. Prime Minister John Howard last month set a target for an additional 30,000 gigawatt-hours of electricity, or about 15 percent of supplies, to come from low-polluting sources, including clean coal power plants, by 2020.
Clean coal plants probably won’t contribute at all to Australia’s clean energy target by 2020, Dominique La Fontaine, chief executive officer of the Clean Energy Council, a Melbourne-based industry lobby group, said in an interview. Wind energy, solar power, co-generation and biomass-fueled plants will probably make the biggest contributions, she said.
The estimated cost of a US government- and industry-funded project to demonstrate a coal-fueled power plant that traps carbon-dioxide emissions has risen 85 percent in three years to $1.76 billion, the US Department of Energy said in May. The FutureGen project is backed by coal companies including Consol Energy Inc., Peabody Energy Corp., Kennecott Energy & Coal Co. and BHP Billiton Ltd.
BP Plc, Rio Tinto Group and Anglo American Plc are involved in potential clean coal ventures in Australia.
There’s a growing realization among utility industry leaders worldwide that so-called clean coal may not be able to address rising emissions from power generation for at least the next decade, said Derek Kidley, energy and utilities leader for the Asia-Pacific region at PricewaterhouseCoopers LLC.

Stronger solar cells. Researchers have developed a non-contact soldering system in which the temperature is constantly monitored.

A single solar cell produces a relatively low output--it’s a case of strength in numbers. Tiny strips of metal are used to link cells together. If the laser soldering temperature is too high, the solder joint may fracture. A new system provides automatic temperature regulation.
Teamwork is what matters--even in the case of solar cells: To obtain sufficient power to operate a pocket calculator, parking ticket dispenser or photovoltaic module, sunlight has to be captured simultaneously by an array of cells. They are connected in series using tiny strips of metal known as stringers. Each stringer has to be positioned in precisely the right spot, then its solder coating is melted using a hot electrode, Science Daily reported.
When the solder sets, it forms a stable bond with the metallic coating on the silicon. The amount of heat induced in the stringer and the silicon depends on the contact between the soldering electrode and the stringer. Applying too much energy causes thermal stress which in the worst case could destroy the solder joint, leaving a break in the electrical circuit that makes the solar module unfit for use.
Researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Laser Technology ILT in Aachen have developed a non-contact soldering system in which the temperature is constantly monitored. If the temperature deviates beyond set limits, the system automatically adjusts it to an acceptable value. “Instead of an electrode, we use a laser beam for the soldering operation,“ says ILT department head Dr. Arnold Gillner.
“To melt the solder, we pass a laser beam over the solder-coated stringer. An infrared heat camera derives the temperature of the silicon and of the metal strip from real-time measurements of their emitted radiant heat. If the temperature is too high or too low, a feedback control circuit automatically adapts the laser output within milliseconds.“ The system is already in use for industrial surface engineering applications. Solar applications could be on the market in a year or so.
The researchers’ next project is to develop a faster, more reliable method of connecting solar cells by means of laser welding. “Whereas soldering only involves melting the solder, in laser welding the stringer itself is melted,“ explains Gillner. This means applying more heat than for soldering, but only for a very short time. “Since the laser is only in contact with the materials for a brief instant, only a small amount of energy is transferred to the materials despite the higher temperature--resulting in even fewer heat-induced defects,“ he adds.
What complicates the matter is the fact that the stringer has a diameter of about 200 micrometers, whereas the metallic coating on the silicon required to conduct electricity has a thickness of a mere 10 micrometers. The laser beam has to be modulated in such a way that the stringer will melt while leaving the coating on the silicon intact.

More than four years after South Dakota built its first wind farm, the windiest state in the US is set to launch its second.
Construction crews have been hoisting turbines for more than a month near Elkton for the Minn-Dakota Wind Farm, which sprawls into Minnesota and is set to produce electricity by December. Thirty-four of the 262-foot turbines will be in South Dakota, according to the developer, PPM Energy of Portland, Ore.
That will make it the largest wind farm in the state. At least two other major wind farms probably will come on line next year, which would almost quintuple the state’s wind power output, Argusleader.com reported.
A lack of high-voltage transmission lines has long kept South Dakota from tapping into its abundant wind potential. But some observers suggest new power lines, lower costs and a growing appetite for renewable energy are opening the door.
“I think last year the egg cracked, and I’m pretty sure that it’s going to continue to really flourish in the next few years,“ said Steve Kolbeck, one of South Dakota’s three elected Public Utilities Commissioners.
He said the Legislature has made important changes, including allowing utilities to make slight rate increases to pay for new transmission lines.
As important are recent transmission upgrades in Minnesota and on the eastern edge of Brookings County. And then there’s the almighty dollar.
“The biggest thing is that the price of power has gone up. So what that has done is that it’s equalized wind’s role in producing power,“ Kolbeck said.
Local support is strong for wind energy, with only the occasional complaint about “sight pollution,“ said Bob Hill, county zoning director.
“We’ve been sitting here for 20 years watching them go up in Minnesota, and it’s about time Brookings County got some of the tax revenue,“ he said.
That new property tax revenue will come to several hundred thousand dollars per year, said Jan Johnson, PPM spokeswoman. Eighty percent of that will go to schools, said county auditor Jan Willmott.
Money also will flow to landowners. Rancher John Leiferman said PPM is building roads and turbine pads on his land for a second wind farm, called Buffalo Ridge. Johnson said details of that project have not been announced yet.
The Minn-Dakota wind farm will generate power at a rate of 51 megawatts when the wind is right. Taking variations in wind speed into account, that will be enough to power 15,000 homes.
PPM’s unannounced wind farm just to the north could bring another 50 megawatts next year. Heartland Consumer Power District plans to buy power from a third installation, near Wessington Springs, also in 2008.
Along with the Highmore Wind Farm, built in 2003, and a few small turbines here and there, that would bring the state total to 196 megawatts.
Even with all three projects, South Dakota will have less than one-fourth the wind power of Iowa, with 967 megawatts, or Minnesota, 897 megawatts.
Transmission line improvements are in the works in Minnesota and in Brookings and Minnehaha counties. And the proposed Big Stone II coal-fired power plant will include more transmission capacity that could be used for wind, according to the utilities trying to build the plant.
But obstacles remain.
South Dakota is far from urban markets. It’s not clear that its superior windiness ever will overcome the cost of power lines, which can cost almost $1 million per mile.
National and international growth in wind energy means labor and equipment are spread thin, and the waiting list for a new wind farm can be as long as two years, Kolbeck said.
And the electric grid in central South Dakota belongs to a consortium of rural cooperatives and a federal agency. It costs extra to export energy from this area, which is a barrier to developments in some of the windiest parts of South Dakota, including the Rosebud Indian Reservation.

An Ohio company has successfully demonstrated the world’s first kilowatt-scale solid oxide fuel cell system that generates electricity using vegetable oil from soybeans. The demonstration further proves Ohio’s standing as a world leader in innovative technology in alternative energy, according to the Ohio Business Development Coalition (OBDC), the nonprofit organization that markets the state for capital investment.
Cleveland, Ohio-based Technology Management, Inc. (TMI) and the Ohio Soybean Council presented the new technology at The Ohio State University Farm Science Review, one of the largest gatherings of the agriculture industry in the Midwest, Fuelcellsworks.com said.
“We believe this is the first time a complete farm scale fuel cell system has ever been shown to convert unblended soybean oil into renewable electricity outside the laboratory,“ said Benson Lee, president and CEO of Technology Management, Inc. “TMI is proud to be among the few companies in the world that are demonstrating that this revolutionary technology is not decades away, but just around the corner.“
The project received contributions from the USDA Biomass Initiative Program, the Ohio Soybean Council and Ohio’s Third Frontier Project, a $1.6 billion initiative that fosters the creation of high-paying jobs through innovation, research and development and the commercialization of next- generation products.
TMI is collaborating with The Ohio State University’s Biomass to Energy Program as part of an ongoing relationship examining the conversion of various biomass waste and organic matter into on-site electricity and marketable biofuels.
“If biofuel-powered fuel cell systems, using renewable fuels like soybean oil, were available to small farms and agri-businesses across the Midwest’s farm belt it would allow America’s strongest engine for economic growth--the small business--to join with big business to help reduce our nation’s dependency on foreign oil and consumption of fossil fuel,“ Lee continued. “The combination of Ohio’s manufacturing, technology and agricultural strengths could create a new industry based on small-scale, on-site, distributed power generation operating on renewable biofuels such as soybeans. And, as the nation’s fourth most energy intensive state, Ohio would benefit by being its own best customer.“
As one of the few places where all phases of fuel cell development take place, from research and development to component suppliers and final product manufacturing, Ohio provides a supportive business environment for alternative energy companies.