Blog: Capital Focus
When things can’t wait, skip Wal-Mart and go for McDonald’s
Published Wednesday, January 30, 2008
Last year, Rep. Jay Ramras was a Wal-Mart kind of gas line guy.
If you have a big open lot in a prime retail area, he argued, don’t put a McDonald’s in the middle of it — build a Wal-Mart and add the restaurant later. That is, don’t mess around with a 2 bcf all-Alaska line when the state could earn much more money from a 4 bcf line through Canada.
Now the Fairbanks Republican and restaurant owner is changing his tune.
“I’m coming around to the port authority,” he said Tuesday.
Instead of waiting 10, 15, maybe even 20 years for a big project to get moving, the state should look at what will get gas to Fairbanks the fastest.
“The cost of energy is taking the fun out of living in Fairbanks,” Ramras said. “People’s discretionary income is being eaten up by the cost of energy.”
Ramras said his first choice now would be a bullet line from the slope to Cook Inlet. If the economics of that don’t work, then he favors the Alaska Gasline Port Authority plan or even a small line that just brings gas from the slope to Fairbanks. Now.
Ramras raised a point that I’ve heard half a dozen times here from lots of folks — that high oil prices are great for state revenues, but not great for state residents. The point has been made in the context of providing a cash “rebate” to Alaskans, in support of renewable energy (all the benefit from high oil prices, no cost), and now, thanks to Ramras, in support of a smaller, faster pipeline.
I guess Ramras’ twist is a little different, but it’s still connected. It suggests that the “maximum benefit” to Alaskans has as much to do with the cost of energy in the state as with the dollars coming into the state treasury.
So build the McDonald’s now and worry about Wal-Mart later.
Geeszch! Fairbanks could have been hooked to northslope-gas 10years ago,easy!
The technology has always been available to build hi-pressure FRP-reinforced and steel-reinforced 800psi ASTM-D2513 8"diameter plastic pipe. -->
It's 143,000feet from Galbraith pump4 to Chandalar Shelf..
You could drop in a quick 8" bullet-line then truck the first shipments of NGL's to railbelt, and would be paid off making a profit within 6months.
[pathetic..WAKE UP!! BUILD AN EXTRUSION PLANT IN FAIRBANKS NOW!!]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fGFz39QUU...
goto LINK for complete article
http://www.allbusiness.com/agriculture-f...
[this is unreinforced single-wall plastic pipe..]
For rapid and economical installation it is difficult to beat coiled plastic pipe. For higher pressures in the range of up to 250 psig it is now possible to install coiled polyamide-11 (PA-11) gas pipe instead of steel in diameters up to two inches. In a study (1) done by Arkema Inc. and Gas Technology Institute (GTI) it was concluded that polyamide-11 pipe could be installed by all of the conventional
methods including plowing and directional boring in addition to the more common open-cut trench methods. Coiled pipe can be used in all of these methods and offers cost advantages over long lengths of plastic pipe fabricated from butt-fused sticks.
Cost Comparisons
In a 2002 survey of 35 gas utilities located around the United States, we received total installed cost (TIC) information about both steel and plastic pipe installations of various lengths and diameters. The data revealed a range of TIC for pipe, excavation, burial, inspection and other typical line-item components of a gas pipe construction job.
The data revealed that in 2002 the typical TIC for 2-inch steel gas pipe ranged from $14-41 per foot based on 2001-2002 steel pricing. The range was representative of various soil types, climates and job mileage. At the same time we learned that 2-inch plastic pipe generally costs about $5-7 per foot to install after it is delivered to the job site if it is installed using sticks.
At PNM it was concluded that the cost of installation of pipe from long coils is about $3 per foot. The 2-inch SDR-11 (Standard Dimension Ratio used to describe pipe wall thickness) PA-11 pipe used for the projects at Nashville Gas and Questar Gas cost about $10 per foot. Two-inch SDR11 PA-11 pipe used for the PNM installation was supplied for about $8 per foot. This puts the TIC range of a PA-11 pipe project at $11-17 per foot which is very competitive with steel costs.
[ I am not affiliated to any company or organization, I'm just a concerned citizen ]
Here's a company that makes the machinery that makes plastic pipe for transporting Nat-Gas...
Tis machinery makes pipe that ranges in size up to 31.5"dia and can carry 4351.131psi..........
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http://www.haosaite.com/en/productshow.a...
The machine unit is a kind of reinforced high-pressure tubing production line researched and developed by ourselves through adsorbing foreign advanced experience and technology. Characterized by reasonable structure, calm running, high output and high automaticity, it can produce PE, PP and other kinds of steel wire reinforced tubing, which have high compactness and can endure pressure of 6-30 megapascal.
It applies to oil and natural gas transportations, water supply line, transfer piping of chemical industry and industrial water line, etc.
Main Technical Parameters:
Model of principal machine: SG-90/28 series and SG-120/28 series
Power: 55KW, 90KW
Rotation speed of screw: 10-80r/min
Output: 80-400kg/h
Production range of tubing: φ75mm-φ800mm
Gross power of auxiliary machine: 180kw
Gross weight: 30000kg
Overall dimension: 53000 000 000 (mm)
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The installed cost per mile of this pipe in a FatFree-Project could be cut to 10% of the cost of Big-Biz BoondogglePipe..
if Alaskans would just wake up and pass the fur-hat around to import their own plastic-pipe extrusion plant to Fairbanks.
You might be surprised how cheap this machine is priced..
probably less than the cost of many houses built in Fairbanks..
so, for less than the price of a house, plus $15million you can be getting several 10,000gal tanker-trucks per day delivering NGL's to Fairbanks...
...and you all could have been doing this 20years ago too, because THIS IS NOT "hot new technology"
-50F in Fairbanks today, eh?
..................................
Polyethylene is a major component of this pipe..
..this is made from ethylene, which is made from ethane...
which is 6% of the total of Northslope-Gas.
[same goes for polypropylene, and crosslinked amines]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethylene
Ethylene is produced in the petrochemical industry by steam cracking. In this process, gaseous or light liquid hydrocarbons are heated to 750–950 °C, inducing numerous free radical reactions followed by immediate quench to freeze the reactions. This process converts large hydrocarbons into smaller ones and introduces unsaturation. Ethylene is separated from the resulting complex mixture by repeated compression and distillation. In a related process used in oil refineries, high molecular weight hydrocarbons are cracked over Zeolite catalysts. Heavier feedstocks, such as naphtha and gas oils require at least two "quench towers" downstream of the cracking furnaces to recirculate pyrolysis-derived gasoline and process water. When cracking a mixture of ethane and propane, only one water quench tower is required.[7]
I really feel sorry for Alaskans...
it must be a freezing-hell having a big bowel obstruction like that for 30 long years, and not being able to pass enough gas to light a fart with a match..
..and now it's getting to the point that you're gonna let Mother Nature do that for you with lightning strikes.
Anybody wanna buy a thousand lightning rods?
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Natural...
..."slow" really doesn't describe it.
"spoiled" might be a better description..
a bunch of rich kids running a place where I've nearly frozen to death more than once becuz I wasn't so very rich.
$20million is all you need to immediately kick-off a $200million 2nd year return ROI, then watch it boom into a $20billion 5yr ROI..........Grrr! nitwits!
Sarah is right...
now is not the time to negotiate with the producers..
they are delirious from belly bloat caused by a chronic 30year long bowel obstruction problem..
just roll the struggling patient over and intubate the posterior orifice..
[ CAUTION! Do Not use a big steel cannula at first, use a small 143,000foot long plastic tube and splice into the existing 8"fuelgasline ]
..
Small is Beautiful..
..start small first.
Small and Fast
Warmth is on the way for all of us..
...and especially all of the Yukon-Koyukuk Alaskans freezing in -50F temps this week looking at all of the pictures on the walls of departed loved ones who have frozen to death in the northland over the past 150years since we all got cameras to remember our misery with.
Why wait for another 10years to get the gas out of an overpriced overblown $20billion dollar boondoggle?
Alaskans could be getting wet-field-gas in 5gallon bottles for cheap if they all showed up at Prudhoe with video-cameras.
The idea of using plastic high-pressure pipe instead of steel-pipe totally changes the geometry of the project.
Yes, Noatak and Kotzebue [Allakaket and Arctic Village too] can have their own inexpensive and speedily built 2″ LPG pipeline without having to build a road access.. it can be laid out in the late winter, and plowed-in during summer, and maintained by a LPG-powered bush-plane that refills it's fuel by cardlock spigots tapped into the line every 10miles...
anybody with a special SourdoughClub/Doyon/Inupiat-card can get fuel in the bush.
This el-cheapo network of plastic LPG lines is also a SMART-Network, becuz this pipe also carries broadband internet too.
A buck a gallon deep in the bush, the further you are from civilization the cheaper it is.
http://www.universal-vortex.com/
The Gates of the Arctic Wildlife Refuge mostly protects the wildlife that lives in the tin-buildings at Prudhoe.
Just when you think you have your market and product controls all figured out and you're about to spend $500million of the citizens money on a business plan that looked good on paper, you get an email from an old indian that totally deflates your dreams and douses your ego.
http://www.peswiki.com/index.php/Directo...
...ok, for all you fans of Al Gore, yeah all this fossil-fool stuff isn't Carbon Neutral.
Maybe we should all learn how to make hydrinos ??
http://www.blacklightpower.com/
"Don't put all your eggs in one basket"..grandma used to say!!
Alaskans should be thinking twice about banking only on the future of hydrocarbons.
The gas itself is of more value to you than the dollars you hope to turn it into.
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Actually, large amounts of unaccounted NGL's have been passing Fairbanksans by right through the middle of town for many years now.
There is no need to look elsewhere to acquire the raw feedstocks to build a large plastics industry in Fairbanks.
Is Plastic pipeline technology another lost opportunity for Fairbanks, North Star Borough, Yukon Koyuk, Doyon [and all other 1stNations families], and Alaskans in general?
Building your own Alaska Rural Gasline Pipelines Network will permanently transform the thousands of square miles of rather-iffy residential real-estate into a sustainable and healthy environment for Alaskan Families to flourish in.
[and, why is the retail cost of propane so expensive in Fairbanks...Hmmmm??? Why are you trucking in LPG-LNG from Canada to Fairbanks?? ]
TAGS seems to be primarily designed as a "Big-Iron Cash-Register" to supply a monolithic-centrist corporate/government welfare-state.
This smells of Total Plantation Mentality, which was imported into Alaska by a diaspora of Confederates from other oil-patches of the world.
[this is copied from Petroleum supply Monthly]
* Trans-Alaska Pipeline System (TAPS) Adjustment for Natural Gas Plant Liquids - This adjustment corrects for overstatement of crude oil input at refineries due to injection of natural gas plant liquids into Alaskan crude oil transported in TAPS. This adjustment is necessary because refiners have been unable to segregate input of natural gas plant liquids from input of Alaskan crude oil.
Beginning with the January 1989 data, adjustments are made to refinery inputs and product supplied of natural gas liquids (NGL's) and refinery inputs of crude oil to account for refiner misreporting. Substantial volumes of NGL's are produced at natural gas processing plants in Alaska and injected into the crude oil moving in the Trans Alaska Pipeline System (TAPS). Refiners receiving any crude oil commingled with NGL's are instructed to report the NGL portion of that stream separately from the crude oil portion. This has not been done for Alaskan crude oil because refiners are unable to identify these volumes for accounting purposes. As a result, the NGL production in Alaska has been credited directly toward product supplied and also toward product supplied from refinery- production when the refiner processes the crude oil-NGL mixture. In addition, the reporting of the commingled stream as crude oil by the refiner has overstated crude oil inputs and resulted in an increase in unaccounted for crude oil equal to the volume of NGL in the crude oil.
To offset this reporting error, an adjustment is made to refinery input in all PAD Districts receiving Alaskan crude oil. The adjustment reduces the crude oil inputs and increases the NGL inputs by an equal amount. Each PAD District adjustment is a portion of the known Alaskan-NGL production that is proportional to the PAD District's share of Alaskan crude oil received at all refineries in the United States. The greatest impact occurs in PAD District 5 for butane and pentanes plus. The reporting problem, which began in 1987, grew as injections of NGL's into the TAPS increased. Data for 1988 was revised in the Petroleum Supply Annual (PSA) to account for the adjustment.
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