NZ | Energy Projects

[Svartmetall]

Originally Posted by buildemhigh

Im no fan of Infratil at all, but its kinda like picking who you dislike the least.. Shell for example isnt without their environmental issues for example

I agree, all oil companies are pretty insidious and very few actually have any mores or morals when it comes to the environment. That said, business practices are the only real thing that distinguishes them. I feel that Infratil is one of those really nasty kinds of company - one that attempts to have fingers in lots and lots of pies and one that is quite anti-competitive. They have set up an incredibly slick PR machine too - have you see the adverts on TV? They've tuned right into the nationalist sentiment that is quite prevalent at times in the masses here.

[buildemhigh]

Originally Posted by Svartmetall

I agree, all oil companies are pretty insidious and very few actually have any mores or morals when it comes to the environment. That said, business practices are the only real thing that distinguishes them. I feel that Infratil is one of those really nasty kinds of company - one that attempts to have fingers in lots and lots of pies and one that is quite anti-competitive. They have set up an incredibly slick PR machine too - have you see the adverts on TV? They've tuned right into the nationalist sentiment that is quite prevalent at times in the masses here.

Yeah, again I am no fan of infratil at all.. but isnt that (slick PR) machine just the way of the modern corporate world.. I am old enough to remember the enron ask why ads of the late 90s early 2000's... ask why.. great campaign yet company was full of shit..

Oil companies and Banks (with telecommunications being a close third) have to be up there for me as the worst offenders of slick PR with pathetic customer values/ethics etc

[Nicco]

That Infratil ad reminds me of the KiwiBank ads. Cringe.

[metroman]

http://www.stuff.co.nz/the-press/bus...-power-station

[Svartmetall]

Very glad that it's a geothermal plant rather than a coal or gas plant. Good news!

[Richard7666]

Anyone know if 'fracking' can be done without getting shit into the water table? This hippy I know and an editorial in the Otago Daily think it should be banned and compare it to the nuke issue.

[LX]

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/n...ectid=10748389

[NZ1]

Methanex, Todd sign 10-year [$860 million] gas plan


LIFE'S A GAS: Todd Energy drilling supervisor Felix Hunger, on site yesterday at the Mangahewa wellsite, has a busy time ahead the company plans to drill 25 new wells over the next five years to help meet a new gas supply contract with Methanex.

A deal signed by two of New Zealand's biggest energy companies is expected to add millions of dollars a year to the Taranaki economy for at least the next decade.

It's also going to require a workforce of up to 500 people for up to seven months at the sprawling methanol plant at Motunui as a second production "train" is brought back to life this year.

Todd Energy has signed a contract with Methanex New Zealand to supply gas from its Mangahewa field northeast of Waitara to the Methanex New Zealand site at Motunui.

This 10-year agreement, which will see Mangahewa gas start flowing to Motunui from July, will enable Methanex to restart its second methanol train – and double production of Taranaki methanol to up to 1.5 million tonnes a year.

The agreement will also provide Todd with the commercial impetus to begin a major drilling programme at Mangahewa, which will see up to 25 new wells drilled and production facilities expanded over the next five years.

The first well is being drilled now at an estimated cost of $30million, and the drilling bit is closing in on the four-kilometre depth where the gas-bearing Mangahewa formation is located. After that the rig will be moved to another site in the gas field where it will drill two more wells back-to-back.

Depending on the success of these wells – and Todd Energy is confident they will be producers – up to another 22 wells will be drilled.

It is estimated the combined capital cost of both projects will be up to $860m – almost all of it spent in Taranaki – and that they will boost Government revenues by up to $1.2 billion over the 10 years.

Yesterday's announcement goes a long way towards confirming growing speculation that the Mangahewa gasfield is much larger than originally thought, and may even rival the nearby offshore Pohokura gasfield, which is New Zealand's largest producer.

Todd Corporation Group chief executive Jon Young said the agreement with Methanex will have major economic benefits for Taranaki and New Zealand.

"The appraisal and development of the Mangahewa field is an exciting project that we expect will have positive implications for the regional economy and the wider national interest," he said.

"A significant proportion of that economic wealth and and job creation will occur in the Taranaki region."

Todd Energy chief executive Paul Moore said the supply contract allowed his company to expand its gas business in Taranaki, in properties it wholly owned and operated.
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"Forming this new commercial arrangement with Methanex enables us to make commercially challenging investments that otherwise might not have happened," he said.

Methanex NZ chief executive Bruce Aitken said the second train had been idle since 2004 and will cost $100m to restart. Once operational, it will allow his company to add up to 650,000 tonnes of incremental capacity per year.

"The quantity of gas supply under this contract potentially allows us to produce about 7.5million tonnes of methanol over the next 10 years, representing multibillion dollars of revenues," he said.

Methanex NZ said the restart project will require in excess of 400 to 500 contractors for six to seven months. After that, the operation will require an employee base of about 165 staff.

"We believe strongly that this project will have a positive benefit to the local community and its residents," said Methanex in a statement.

"For example, not only does restarting the Motunui plant signal to oil and gas explorers that there is a local user to be supplied, but Port Taranaki will benefit as a consequence of the increase in the levels of liquids export volumes."

- © Fairfax NZ News

[IThomas]

Big boost for Contact in 2014 as capital projects wind back

Contact Energy shareholders can expect a substantial boost to cash flow from 2014 onwards as the company completes geothermal projects, winds back major capital spending and seeks to sell some of its $100 million of development land holdings. The company's decision to all but abandon long-held hydro-electricity developments on the Clutha River was part of a wider drive to strip capital project costs out of the business for the time being, chief executive Dennis Barnes told BusinessDesk. Contact cited weak national electricity demand, the challenge of gaining resource consents and better options elsewhere for putting on ice hydro-electricity projects that could potentially double its output from the Clutha River, and beginning a process of selling land holdings in the area.The Clutha options were not commercially viable "in the foreseeable future."
Contact already has 752 MW of installed capacity at the Clyde and Roxburgh hydro stations on the Clutha, and inherited options for developments at Tuapeka Mouth, Beaumont, Queensberry, and Luggate totalling 763MW when it was corporatised in the mid-1990's.

Since then, the company has periodically examined its Clutha options, while fending off criticism from local communities that a lack of clarity about its plans was impeding economic development. A review of calculations last made in 2008 had shown roading infrastructure costs would be far higher than originally estimated, while the size of each project was too large to consider building for the foreseeable future. Asked whether the decision signalled the end of "big hydro" in New Zealand, Barnes said: "I don't believe so, but I can't answer the question for 15 to 20 years." It would be 2025 "at the earliest" before any of the Clutha options made sense to re-examine. "We will stop spending money on it," he said. "Project development pipelines need to show a return and we needed to take the community to an honest point. We decided we wouldn't do any work for seven, eight or 10 years, and it was fair to tell them that."

Contact also had more attractive geothermal and wind development options than any of its large hydro prospects, although it has extended for one year its resource consents on a small hydro scheme attached to the control gates on Lake Hawea, the only controlled storage lake on the Clutha system. Barnes said one of his chief tasks in the last year had been to strip out capital development costs from the business, and to start implementing a more active land management policy to rationalise the company's approximately $100 million portfolio of development and other land holdings around the country.

The Clutha decision is still a step away from complete abandonment, with Contact proposing in some cases to sell land with encumbrances either to allow a future hydro development or preventing sale to a competing hydro developer. "A dammed river is a very significant energy resource and will have a value over a timeframe," he said. The company is taking a similar approach to land purchased for its mega-wind farm development in the North Island, on the coast north of Raglan, selling property with a future development right attached.

Contact owned only about 20 per cent of the land it required to build any of the proposed Clutha dams. No decision had yet been made on exactly how much of its land holdings would be marked for disposal, Barnes said. He conceded also that resource consents in the lower South Island were likely to take longer and be more costly to obtain than in some other parts of the country. "Our view is that if you take your time and are transparent, they are consent-able," he said. "But in that part of the country, the community conversations take longer and cost more. It's different from Wairakei, where the community embraces geothermal development."

Barnes said that once the 166MW Te Mihi geothermal plant was completed in 2013 that would bring to an end four years in which Contact had committed an average of $500 million of capital annually. "It will drop to $100 million or less. The balance goes to cash flow. You will see that very strongly in 2014." Contact shares traded unchanged at $4.85 on the NZX and have declined about 8 per cent this year.

[NZ1]

We're sitting on a vast gas reservoir


A Solid Energy rig drills for coalseam gas near Whangamomona


New Zealand's biggest coal company has confirmed Taranaki as the country's hot spot for future development of a new energy source – coalseam gas.

State-owned enterprise Solid Energy is now forecasting that the vast coalfields in eastern Taranaki have the potential to produce enough gas to supply a 400-megawatt power station the size of Huntly for 45 years.

The company says an independent assessment of its coalseam gas acreage in Taranaki indicates it has 858 billion cubic feet (24.3 billion cubic metres) of what are known as contingent resources, which could represent as much as 900 petajoules of gas – way up on its previous estimate of 190PJ.

By way of comparison, the Pohokura offshore gasfield in North Taranaki contains between 500 and 1200PJ of gas, while South Taranaki's Kupe field is estimated to contain 300PJ. A city the size of New Plymouth consumes around 5PJ a year for residential use.

Solid Energy has reacted to the results of the assessment – which was conducted by Texas-based Netherland, Sewell and Associates Inc – by applying to the Government for a five-year extension of the petroleum exploration permit that encompasses the eastern Taranaki coalfields. This will give the company time to move into discovery and appraisal phases.

And, so that it can focus is entire coalseam gas operations on Taranaki, the company has dumped a number of exploration permits it now considers to be less prospective, including Waiau and Winton in the South Island, and Counties in the North Island. It also looks likely to mothball an exploration permit at Huntly, including a coalseam-gas demonstration plant it built there.

Dr Steven Pearce, Solid Energy's general manager of gas developments, said in an interview last night that his company will now carry out more exploration drilling in an effort to find the best place to build a pilot gas production plant.

"There's lots that needs to be done – build the pilot plant so we can then begin to understand what rates of gas production we can achieve, and the cost of production," he said.

"But it is very exciting for us. The results of our exploration drilling out there have exceeded all expectations, and we are confident we have discovered a very significant nonconventional gas supply."

Solid Energy's decision to focus its coalseam gas operations entirely on Taranaki follows the drilling of a series of exploration wells along the region's eastern border over the past two years. Four of them were drilled in the Waitaanga and Mt Damper areas, with a further seven drilled in Tahora and Tangarakau.

Dr Pearce said the success of the drilling programme, and the assessment that has resulted in the four-fold increase in contingent gas resources, is extremely encouraging.

Coalseam gas is being used increasinglyaround the world – it already provides 15 per cent of the United States gas supply and close to 90 per cent in Queensland.

According to information supplied by Solid Energy, when coal forms in the ground, associated chemical and biological processes produce methane gas. This methane sticks to the coal surface and stays in place because of high underground pressure within the coalseam. When water is pumped out of the seam, the pressure is lowered and the gas is released to the surface.

[Richard7666]

OPINION: Southlanders don't tend to palpitate all that readily, any more, at the very thought of deep-sea oil and gas drilling in the Great South Basin.

Hopes have risen, only to be dashed, for a couple of generations now. Old-timers who have vivid memories of the heady days of the 1970s and 1980s could be forgiven for regarding the dynamic as quite reliably disappointing.

Even so, the passage of time brings more than just discouragements. Prospecting and drilling technologies have advanced spectacularly.

The carefully framed and qualified optimism of the Shell representatives in Southland this week suggests that we may be on the brink of our best crack at it yet.

When exploration venture manager Roland Spuij spoke of the Hunt campaign in the 1970s, it was as an incredibly courageous one, both because the technical abilities and seismic readings were Dark Ages stuff compared with now, and because the drilling itself required taking huge risks in an extremely dangerous area. Which this is, even by global standards. It's a frontier territory posing high technical risk. Not for nothing did Exxon Mobil and Todd Oil surrender their permits in 2010.

Quite obviously, the Gulf of Mexico disaster stands as a particularly vivid cautionary reminder that things can still go wrong. Only a fool would be phlegmatic about the challenges that those wild seas pose for even the shiniest and newest technologies.

None of which means that it is, inherently, forever out of reach.

For now, at least, the immediate challenge is finding the blessed stuff. In that respect the far more precise readings about promising locations mean test drilling is much less imprecise than it was.

The 3-D seismic readings already taken indicate scant possibility of commercial quantities of oil. The real curiosity, now, is about gas.

Analysis is still under way and Shell has indicated it will make up its mind in September on whether to drill, though the Government will not be informed until January. Test drilling, if it goes ahead, would be spread over 2014-16 and, even then, first gas production would most likely be around 2025.

You were expecting, maybe, instant gratification? Not in this business, though the economic benefits to Southland of even the testing process are liable to be considerable.

Should the drilling tap into a gaseous motherlode, a floating structure would be put in place to turn the gas into condensate and it would be transferred to tankers. If it is less, but still enough to be recoverable, then there would be a pipeline to get it to land. As far as Southland is concerned, that"s a not-too-shabby plan B.
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Shell talks a good game and even Mr Spuij himself readily acknowledges that, as a prospector, he tends towards optimism. It will be up to other heads at Shell to make the final decision.

For now, we shan't be getting overly excited about the prospects. But let's not be blase or dismissive, either.

It's probably the most positive indication we've had for several decades.

http://www.stuff.co.nz/southland-tim...e-gas-gettable