It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Monday, May 08, 2023
Norway’s Surprise Natural Gas Nationalization Plan Even Broader Than Expected
Norway’s plan to nationalize natural gas assets includes more than just Gassled’s natural gas pipelines, new information revealed in a letter from the Norwegian energy minister showed on Friday.
The surprise move to nationalize the country’s gas assets will also include other assets—including the Nyhamna processing plant.
Last Friday, Norway’s oil and energy minister said it would nationalize its natural gas pipelines within the next five years when existing concessions are set to expire. But now, a new letter to licensees seen by Reuters on Friday said that that plan also includes “other central parts of the Norwegian gas infrastructure that are currently owned by Nyhamna and Plarled, as well as Vestprosess DA.”
Norway’s gas pipeline network encompasses 5,600 miles of pipelines, most of which are owned by Gassled.
The letter to all licensees, which include Shell, ConocoPhillips, and Equinor, said that it had a goal to “complete state ownership of Norwegian gas infrastructure.”
Norway became Germany’s single-largest natural gas supplier last year, overtaking Russia, with Germany’s gas imports dropping by 12.3%. Norway provided Germany—Europe’s largest economy—with 33% of all of the gas it imported in 2022, while Russia’s share of the German gas market fell to 22% last year, the Germany Federal Network Agency Bundesnetzagentur said in early January.
Norway’s oil and gas ministry said last Friday that it was notifying licensees to let them know that the country wants to “make use of the right of repatriation at the end of the license period,” adding that it “wants complete state ownership of the central parts of the Norwegian gas transport system.”
Norway exported more than 120 billion cubic meters of gas last year, mainly via its pipelines, making it Europe’s largest gas supplier.
By Julianne Geiger for Oilprice.com
Just How Advanced Are Today’s Autonomous Vehicles?
While autonomous vehicles are frequently in the headlines, the industry is one that is largely misunderstood by the public.
There are six different levels of autonomous vehicles, from level 0 to level 5, and experts believe developers are still decades away from reaching that final level.
Currently, some companies are trialing level 3 and even level 4 cars, but to get from trials to the commercial release of these vehicles is no mean feat.
By now, most people have a basic idea of the concept of autonomous driving that goes beyond what was depicted in old sci-fi movies. But few understand the multiple different autonomous vehicle (AV) levels and how they can be used. With cities around the world now beginning to test out AVs on their roads, it is important we understand what kind of technology they’re using and what impact that could have on drivers and pedestrians.
What most people have in mind when they think of AVs is the driver having no input and the car being run entirely by a machine. However, this is not currently the case. There are six levels of autonomous vehicles, from zero to five, which include no driving automation, driver assistance, partial driving automation, conditional driving automation, high driving automation, and full driving automation. And the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) International determines the level of autonomy of a vehicle.
A level zero vehicle with no driving automation does not have any automation features, meaning the driver must always take full control of the vehicle. Although the vehicle is still equipped with warning signals and emergency safety actions to warn the driver of any issues. The driver must both drive manually and be aware of any warning and safety issues. Technologies that fall under this type of vehicle include ABS, ESP, cruise control, blind spot warning, automatic emergency braking, frontal collision warning and land departure warning.
A level one vehicle with driver assistance has a system that assists breaking, accelerating, and steering, while the driver still has the overall responsibility for these actions. Systems such as these include electronic adaptive speed regulators and adaptive cruise control, as well as lane keeping assistance and lane centering assistance. This offers a higher level of support to the driver than level zero systems, although the driver still manages the driving responsibility.
A level two vehicle with partial driving automation is one of the most common forms of automation currently available. These vehicles have advanced driving assistance systems (ADAS), which provide continual assistance for braking, accelerating, and steering. The driver must still be attentive, but they have the option of giving the system control of combined longitudinal and lateral functions.
At level three, a vehicle with conditional driving automation, the automation options are more advanced. There are not many level-three options on the market yet. In this case, the driver has the option of allowing the system to take over driving responsibilities. The system can carry out all driving functions, but the driver must be in the driver’s seat to take control if required or requested.
A level four system, with high driving automation, acts much in the same way as level three but the equipment can intervene in the case of a malfunction without having to involve the driver. Although the driver can still take manual control of the vehicle. This type of vehicle is currently only permitted to be used in certain city centers with low speed limits. There is the potential for this technology to be used for ride-sharing services in the future.
And finally, a level five vehicle, with full driving automation, has the highest level of automation system. It requires no human intervention and drivers cannot intervene in the case of an emergency. These vehicles do not have manual controls such as pedals or a steering wheel. This means the car passenger cannot act as a driver and can, instead, completely ignore driving activities.
There have been increasing concerns over the safety of AVs in recent months, as some failures in the testing phase have come to light. Despite only recently beginning trials with level three and four vehicles, many are skeptical use of these semi-automated vehicles. For example, General Motors announced this month that it would be recalling the automated driving software in 300 vehicles after a driverless vehicle crashed with a bus in San Francisco. This was caused by a software error in a Cruise AV, meaning it did not accurately predict the movement of the articulated bus. The crash caused moderate damage but no injuries.
Seattle also approved permitting to test self-driving vehicles in November last year, with companies such as Amazon expected to carry out trials in the city. Companies will be required to share information with the city including their test driver training programs, any collisions, and proof of insurance. Ford’s driverless startup Argo AI and Volkswagen began to test AVs in 2022 in Miami, Florida, and Austin, Texas. These vehicles had no one in the driver’s seat but did have someone in the passenger seat who could pull the car over and stop in the case of an emergency.
Level five automation is something that many car manufacturers are ultimately aiming for, with billions of dollars of funding going into research and development. But experts believe it could take decades to get to this point. In addition, it will be much easier to roll out self-driving cars in cities and countries with strict road laws that are adhered to, rather than in more chaotic environments. Places where jaywalking is illegal, and therefore few pedestrians walk into the street at non-designated crossings, will help autonomous systems to better predict hazards and respond accordingly than places where there are no such rules and pedestrian actions are less predictable.
While AVs have come a long way in recent years, there is still a long way to go. Companies worldwide are just entering the trial phases of self-driving cars in several major cities but are a long way off from the commercial release of these vehicles. But with billions going into research and development, we can expect several more innovations in AV technology in the coming decades.
By Felicity Bradstock for Oilprice.com
Censors for auto-piloting on the roof. Photo: Gazprom
Russian Gazprom Neft launches driverless trucks in the Arctic
The new technology is supposed to help to avoid truck driver shortages, increase road safety and efficiency, experts say.
Russian oil and gas company Gazprom reported it has begun to use self-driving cars to deliver cargos in the Arctic tundra across the 140 km route at Gydan peninsula.
The route connects the Vostochno-Messoyakhskoye oilfield with the Tazovsky settlement.
The driverless truck. Photo by: Gazprom
“The use of driverless vehicles will increase the efficiency of the logistics of the company’s northern fields and increase the volume of supplies of the necessary equipment and materials,” Gazprom Neft reported.
According to Gazprom, the driverless trucks, that are produced by the Russian Kamaz, are equipped with a satellite navigation system and could detect an obstacle within 200 meters on its way.
The driverless truck. Photo by: Gazprom
The trucks are also capable of differentiating a moving object from a stable one and create a digital route.
The new chemical process is not limited to wind turbine blades but works on many different so-called fiber-reinforced epoxy composites, including some materials that are reinforced with especially costly carbon fibers.
Thus, the process can contribute to establishing a potential circular economy in the wind turbine, aerospace, automotive and space industries, where these reinforced composites, due to their lightweight and long durability, are used for load-bearing structures.
After six days of catalysis in the laboratory, a piece of a wind turbine blade was dissolved into intact glass fibers and bisphenol A, which can be used in the production of new blades – in addition to a fraction of various oligomers, which cannot be recycled. The metal piece was cast into the wing as part of the wind turbine’s lightning protection. Image Credit: Alexander Ahrens, Aarhus University. Click the press release link for the largest view.
Being designed to last, the durability of the blades poses an environmental challenge. Wind turbine blades mostly end up at waste landfills when they are decommissioned, because they are extremely difficult to break down.
If no solution is found, we will have accumulated 43 million metric tons of wind turbine blade waste globally by 2050.
The newly discovered process is a proof-of-concept of a recycling strategy that can be applied to the vast majority of both existing wind turbine blades and those presently in production, as well as other epoxy-based materials.
Specifically, the researchers have shown that by using a ruthenium-based catalyst and the solvents isopropanol and toluene, they can separate the epoxy matrix and release one of the epoxy polymer’s original building blocks, bisphenol A (BPA), and fully intact glass fibers in a single process.
However, the method is not immediately scalable yet, as the catalytic system is not efficient enough for industrial implementation – and ruthenium is a rare and expensive metal. Therefore, the scientists from Aarhus University are continuing their work on improving this methodology.
Troels Skrydstrup, a professor at the Department of Chemistry and the Interdisciplinary Nanoscience Center (iNANO) at Aarhus University and one of the lead authors of the study commented, “Nevertheless, we see it as a significant breakthrough for the development of durable technologies that can create a circular economy for epoxy-based materials. This is the first publication of a chemical process that can selectively disassemble an epoxy composite and isolate one of the most important building blocks of the epoxy polymer as well as the glass or carbon fibers without damaging the latter in the process.”
The research is supported by the CETEC project (Circular Economy for Thermosets Epoxy Composites), which is a partnership between Vestas, Olin Corporation, the Danish Technological Institute and Aarhus University.
***
This is interesting news. While not economical by a description not explained, there is a known way now to answer the bedeviling problem of what to do with the blades that aren’t useable.
There’s going to be a catalyst hunt to replace the ruthenium and there might need to be quite an engineering effort. Toluene isn’t something we should allow to simply evaporate into the atmosphere. They’re going to need robotic handlers in a gas-tight facility and very likely a way to reliquify the toluene and other chemicals.
But it can and should be done. A facility is just going to need big treatment tanks and the process will be far more expensive than anyone thought. There are a lot of blades now and its likely a huge number are going to be built.
The outlook for commercial nuclear fusion has changed drastically in recent years, with growing investment, more breakthroughs, and plenty of governmental support.
The most important breakthrough yet came in December when a team of researchers finally created net positive energy from a fusion reaction.
There are still plenty of hurdles to overcome, most notably the cost of nuclear fusion and the constant delays in projects.
A powerful combination of scientific breakthroughs, private and public funding, and governmental support has drastically changed the outlook for commercial nuclear fusion. Just ten years ago, reporters and industry experts alike were still joking that “Nuclear fusion is 30 years away...and always will be.” Now, seemingly very suddenly, the narrative has shifted from a conversation about “if” to one about “when.” Instead of postulating that we may possibly see reliable and scalable ignition in our lifetimes, experts are now saying that we could see pilot nuclear power plants within a decade.
In the last three years, everything has changed. Scientific breakthroughs have increased exponentially overnight. All of them have been key to the evolution of the nascent technology, but three in particular have combined to tip the commercial nuclear fusion scales from pipe dream to possibility. First, in 2021, researchers at the Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) in Hefei, China shattered previous records for a sustained steady-state fusion reaction, achieving fusion for a groundbreaking 1,056 seconds, or nearly 20 minutes. Just a few months later, The Joint European Torus (JET) in Oxfordshire more than doubled its previous fusion record (set way back in 1997) when it produced 59 megajoules of fusion energy in a single experiment.
But the most important breakthrough came last December, researchers at the National Ignition Facility (NIF) in California made a massive breakthrough when they became the first team to finally overcome what is still nuclear fusion’s most significant barrier: creating net positive energy from the fusion reaction. The now legendary experiment laser-beamed 2.05 megajoules of light onto an amount of fusion fuel about the size of a peppercorn, sparking an impressive explosion producing 3.15 MJ of energy – around the equivalent of three sticks of dynamite.
The building momentum in scientific breakthroughs has been enabled by – and in turn has enabled – a massive increase in funding. Historically, the vast majority of fusion experiments have been publicly funded, as governments were more or less the only entities with deep enough pockets to afford the massively ambitious experiments. But in recent years the private sector has gotten increasingly involved in fusion funding thanks in large part to a veritable flood of venture capital, with considerable success. The shortlist of private investors includes such heavy hitters as Jeff Bezos, Peter Thiel, Lockheed Martin, Goldman Sachs, Legal & General, and Chevron.
But the public sector, too, has kept pace. Still, the majority of the most significant fusion reactors are publicly funded and managed, and some of the most promising new fusion projects are indeed public enterprises. The Atomic Energy Commission and the U.S. Department of Energy have recently partnered with private firms such as General Atomics, marking an important development in the marriage of private and public sectors. And policy measures to support the advancement of nuclear fusion research and experimentation has also increased in recent years. The Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act, for example, earmarked $280 million for fusion projects.
But it’s not all good news. Fusion remains enormously expensive, and the achievement of net energy production remains elusive. Even ITER, the world’s biggest (and most promising, according to some) fusion experiment co-funded by 35 nations in the South of France, is currently vastly over budget and behind schedule. Unsurprisingly, Covid hasn’t helped. ITER had originally projected that first plasma would be achieved in 2025. That has now been pushed back by a full year – at the very least.
Furthermore, the sector faces significant regulatory challenges. “Beyond the engineering and financial issues, fusion will also need a regulatory framework,” Power recently reported, before going on to note that, currently, “both the industry and the NRC [Nuclear Regulatory Commission] agree that the current framework designed for fission reactors is not appropriate for fusion power plants.”
Despite the significant setbacks and challenges facing scalable nuclear fusion, the outlook is definitively better than it's ever been. In the words of Power, “The large number of projects working in parallel suggest that net energy could potentially be achieved via magnetic fusion in the late 2020s, which would conveniently coincide with the forthcoming NRC regulatory framework. Should that occur, it is likely that funding will be available for the first FPPs, which could come online as soon as the early 2030s.”
