Science

Opinion please – Gas wars

Unless it pays off its gas debts within five days, Belarus will face gas cuts, Russian president
Dmitry Medvedev warned Belarus last week. And he wasn’t bluffing. This week Russia started cutting supplies to its neighbour by one-quarter.


About a fifth of Europe’s supplies of Russian gas is pumped through Belarus. Wouter Pieterse, a PhD student specializing in the geopolitics of energy, does not believe however that this quarrel will have a major impact on gas supplies to the rest of Europe. “If necessary, Russia can pump more gas through Ukraine”, he says. “And what’s more, it’s summer now, so we require less gas. Many countries, including the Netherlands and Germany, are filling up their gas reservoirs.”


Nonetheless quarrels like this between Russia and former Soviet states are troublesome for Europe. Can’t Europe reduce its dependency on this gas?

Pieterse: “Pipelines are planned and being built through Turkey, from Asia to southern Europe, and the North Stream Pipeline is being built through the Baltic, directly linking Germany to Russia, and reducing dependency on transit countries like Belarus and the Ukraine.”


Pieterse, an energy expert at the faculty of Technology, Policy and Management, also notes that we have been buying gas from Russia for more than thirty years, so we should see things in perspective: “This country, where one-third of the world’s gas reserves have been found, is quite reliable, despite the politics between Russia and the former Soviet states that are still in its power sphere.”


And how about increasing our own gas production? Last week New Scientist wrote about non-conventional ways of winning gas, which could possibly increase the world’s reserves three or four times over (Wonderfuel gas, NS, 12 June 2010).


But petroleum professor, Stefan Luthi (Civil Engineering and Geosciences), says the prospects in Europe are not too rosy. The technique involves drilling deep into shale, containing hydrocarbons, originating from life forms millions of years old. Under enormous pressure and heat from the Earth’s core, these remnants crack into ever smaller molecules, culminating in methane. Only a tiny fraction of the gas rises through the shale, where it may be captured in porous stone under a sealing cap. “We know of the Slochteren reservoir, but there will be plenty more gas stuck in the carbon layers underneath”, prof. Luthi explains.


To win this gas, a hole is drilled into the ‘mother stone’, and then horizontal corridors are drilled extending into the stone. Trucks rigged with high-pressure pumps then pump water down through the hole at hundreds of bars, fracturing the stone beneath and thus liberating the gas from the stone. Gas will then spontaneously rise from the well for anything between a few days or a number of years.


It’s an expensive method, Luthi warns, while adding that he believes this fracturing method will only be used if fuel prices rise significantly. Apart from that, Luthi says, European environmental laws will limit the use of fracturing, since it requires, and pollutes, large amounts of water.

Two technostarters affiliated with TU Delft, Sanne Castro and Hjalmar van Raemdonc, are finalists in the Dutch Postcode Lottery Green Challenge – first prize €500.000. A shortlist of six finalists has been selected from the 313 plans for reducing global CO2 emissions submitted to the competition. Castro, of the Delft technostarter SimGas, aims to introduce an affordable biogas system, which could potentially supply millions of people in developing countries with safe energy. The system collects water, kitchen waste and toilet waste, converting it into gas for cookers and lamps. Van Raemdonck, founder of technostarter Ephicas, developed a side spoiler that improves the aerodynamics of trucks, thus considerably reducing a truck’s fuel consumption and fuel costs. The Green Challenge final will take place during the Picnic ’09 multimedia event, from 23-25 September, in the Westergasfabriek in Amsterdam.

www.greenchallenge.info

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