OGPSS - Shell looks to the future

Each year the larger oil production companies provide their views of the future, and I recently reviewed that for ExxonMobil. Shell has now produced their projections, though in a somewhat different format as the document “New Lens Scenarios” which deals with future projections as a set of differing options. That does not make these views less informative.

In reviewing where the world will go, Shell looks more to political impact as the future unrolls. They see the European Union stuck in a Trapped Transition” where:

the ‘can’ keeps being ‘kicked down the road’ while leaders struggle to create some political and social breathing space.
so there is continuing drift, punctuated by a series
of mini-crises, which will eventually culminate in either a reset involving the writing off of sign and political capital (through pooling for example) or the euro unravelling.

On the other hand countries such as China and Brazil are resilient:

in their different ways, they had the financial, social, political, or resource ‘capital’ to respond and reform, following a room to Manoeuvre pathway.

Within the next thirty years, as the population grows, so a greater percentage, up to 75%, will live in cities. And these will consume a greater fraction of the global energy supply, perhaps as high as 80%, up from the current 66%.

The document is very much slanted as a Socio-political forecast, with considerable polemic in regard to the weaknesses that the company perceives to exist in the West.

Shell postulate two different scenarios for the future. There is the Mountain scenario, where business continues very much as usual, and then there is an Oceans scenario where the” powers that are” work toward a more accommodative approach to those in the developing world, and the less fortunate layers of society.

The document begins with the impact if the Mountain scenario is to prevail, driven through a top down control, largely through existing institutions. Shell is not enamoured of this:

In the US, for example, income and wealth inequality continue to increase, with stagnating middle-class earnings, reduced social mobility, and an allegedly meritocratic higher education system, generously supported by tax exemptions, whose main beneficiaries are the children of the successful. superimposed on this class divide is an increasingly serious intergenerational divide, as commitments to the elderly via entitlement programmes crowd out discretionary expenditures that could rebuild economic and social infrastructure. Similarly, in Europe an ageing population and commitments to high levels of entitlement, which are frequently underfunded, create a mixture of social and political strains that deflect attention from the core structural economic issues facing the region.

Driven by this gloomy picture of the future Shell anticipate that global GDP growth through the 2030’s will average under 2%. This will, in turn, moderate the growth in energy demand. Increasing urbanization, the growth of the service sector and the greater use of electricity in developing countries, Shell anticipate that the strong correlation between economic and energy demand growth will be broken.


Figure 1. Shell projection of future energy supply, through 2060 under the Mountain scenario. (Shell)

N.B. All the illustrations come from the Shell New Lens Scenarios document.
Shell anticipates that hydrogen, an up and comer just a few years ago, and now largely neglected, will undergo a “phoenix-like” resurrection and find a market both in industrial and transportation as an alliance of government and private industry push a hydrogen infrastructure post-2020. They anticipate that the use of liquid fuels for passenger road transport will peak in 2035, and that by 2070 the global passenger transportation network, using roads, could be nearly oil-free, as hydrogen and electric powered vehicles take over.


Figure 2. Shell future projection of vehicular fuel sources.

The energy burden will transfer from crude oil to natural gas, which will increasingly underpin the global economies, as China joins the top tier of natural gas producers.


Figure 3. Sources of liquid fuels through 2060 (Shell)

The increase in the volumes of natural gas that become available from tight shales and coalbed sources are sufficient that, by 2035 Shell anticipates that natural gas will not only displace crude oil as the primary transportation fuel, but that it will also encourage a robust pretrochemical industry based on methane. Shell sees the possibility of US energy self-sufficiency in the 2030’s as peak oil theories are abandoned.

The availability and broad use of natural gas will also allow time for credible carbon capture and sequestration technology to be developed and demonstrated, so that by the time that coal is needed as a fuel (around 2075) it will be usable while sustaining the zero-carbon dioxide levels for electricity generation that become widespread by 2060.

In the alternative Oceans scenario, the more accommodative approach, Shell looks to a willingness to share technology and compromise on issues of ownership and profit as a way of encouraging globalization and developing productivity. Societal interconnectivity is encouraged by greater use of the Web, and this leads to significant changes, with existing leaderships yielding to allow a broadening of governance and significant reform. The greater spread of information and connectivity makes for the more fluid nature of geopolitics that names the scenario, as increasing populism is both a source of innovation and a challenge to stability. Populism is seen as a challenge to US dominance, and is considered likely to cause “destructive and violent reactions” as globalization progresses.

This progress is seen as most likely to through technological interconnection between entities that creates a new class of Mandarin who is less accountable to traditional masters. In this scenario Shell see the world increasingly run by more flexible, and decentralized governments “that have embraced radical pathways 
to economic sustainability”. And this includes both the United States and China. In this regard they quote the work of Anne-Marie Slaughter of Princeton on a New World Order.

This change from the current business-as-usual (BAU) model has an impact on fuel availability and use. The encouragement of entrepreneurship is seen to significantly increase the penetration of solar power into the energy mix, while sustaining the era in which crude oil contributes beyond that of the Mountains scenario.


Figure 4. Energy Sources under the Oceans scenario projected by Shell.

In comparison with the projections under the BAU natural gas is less of a player, though Shell don’t explain either where the additional oil will come from, or why the rush to invest in natural gas is turned off. They anticipate that the reliance on hydrocarbons will cause a rise in price that will open the door to new resources and technologies, particularly with solar power.

In this future Shell sees the developing world taking more of the energy pie, yet transitioning rapidly into a lighter industrial society, with a large service component. (One wonders where the necessary heavy industry goes, as it also transitions to become 80% more efficient?) Heat pumps become a widespread domestic unit, with their benefits in energy efficiency. And, in order to sustain their market share, internal combustion engines become increasingly efficient and technically advanced. While crude oil use will increase until the 2040’s, beyond that time the increased use of biofuels will allow liquid fuel dominance to continue in vehicular use. There are two main sources for these biofuels, first generation fuels, mainly sugar based ethanol, which will contribute some 4 mbd by 2050, and second generation biofuels from non-food crops which come to dominate beyond that time. As this transition occurs so traditional biomass use will disappear by the end of the century.

The different consequences of the two scenarios, as they impact fuel sources, and the unconventional nature of the Shell answers to “where will the resource come from” is shown in two plots that summarize the two energy futures.


Figure 5. Energy sources of the future, as seen by Shell under two different scenarios – Mountains and Oceans.

Under the BAU Mountain view the additional required energy will come in the natural gas side of the house, with Methane Hydrates being the major new source of fuel. With the competing Oceans scenario the energy comes from the development of kerogen from the oil shales of Colorado, Wyoming and Utah. By the end of the century renewable energy will supply more than half the electricity demand around the world, with solar carrying the greatest share of this. However they do not see the electricity generating industry becoming carbon neutral until the 2090’s, as CCS penetrates the industry.


Figure 6. Shell’s view of electricity power sources by 2100.

Shell foresee that the problems of energy storage (80% of the solar power in many OECD countries is generated in the summer) will be overcome through the use of electrolysis and the storage of the resulting hydrogen.

There is much to debate over the basis on which Shell have derived the scenarios that form this report. It remains more optimistic about the oil and gas futures that I can find a basis for accepting, but nevertheless it is well worth reading as it provides two views of what might come about. The impact of societal pressures and drivers produce two different energy futures, and while I suspect that reality will be quite different, with “unknown unknowns” having great influence, the effort is worthwhile.

OGPSS - update

For a couple of reasons I will not be putting up a post on energy this week, but hope to bring it back next week. And here is the rest of it.

Waterjetting 7d - High-pressure Waterjet cleaning over sandblasting paint

Over the years I have been caught up in “discussions” with several folk about how good high-pressure and ultra-high pressure waterjet streams were as a surface cleaning tool, in contrast with chemical and abrasive use in removing paint and other surface layers. One debate was about cleaning some particularly toxic chemicals from various surfaces. The point that often comes up in these discussions is that of “how clean is clean?” And in this particular case it was stated that the surface could never be completely cleaned. The rationale for that position was because the chemicals would enter into any cracks and flaws in the paint, and could therefore be retained either in the top coat, or the underlying primer. My answer to that was to take a small sample and clean the surface over the first quarter, raise the pressure and remove the top coat on the second quarter, raise the pressure further and remove the primer down to bare metal on the third quarter, and then, after adding a small amount of abrasive to the water, remove a thin surface coat of metal from the sample. It seemed to be a convincing demonstration, though I will come back to one problem in a later post, and for this post I will discuss taking the paint off.

It is now reasonably well known that high-pressure water can be cost effective as a way of removing paint, particularly from large structures such as bridges, and ship hulls, but it took a while for some of the benefits to become evident.


Figure 1. It was originally estimated that it would save some $1.75 Canadian per square foot to clean the Quebec Bridge with ultra-high pressure waterjets, rather than sandblasting. That increases to $4.50 per sq. ft. were hand tools the alternative (WJTA Jet News, March 2000)

There are 8-million square feet of surface in the bridge. As I noted at the end of the last post, the historic method for cleaning surfaces, and removing deteriorated paint has been to suspend abrasive particles in an air stream, and to use those particles to abrade and erode the paint from the surface. When the paint, rust and other coatings have been removed the job is often considered finished when the surface is restored to a nice shiny surface finish. There is, however, a snag, when one does this. The numbers that I was once given were on the order of: from the time that a railroad wagon was put into service, it would take 5 years before it would require stripping and repainting. After that first treatment, however, the paint would deteriorate more quickly and often within another 18-months the wagon would have to be taken back for repainting.

So why is this, and why does high/ultra-high pressure paint removal help extend the life of that second paint coating? I, and the industry, are deeply indebted to Dr. Lydia Frenzel who did a lot of the pioneering work in helping to define the benefits of the technology, and then spread the word about them. The problem begins as the surface begins to corrode, and I will continue to use the wagon as the example, though the result holds true for many surfaces. As the rust and damage continues to eat through the paint and into the underlying metal, that surface is not attacked evenly, but, instead small pockets of corrosion develop, where the metal is eaten away more in the middle or along the sides of the pocket.

By the time that the surface is ready to be painted it is no longer, therefore, smooth, but rather is pitted and covered in corrosion.


Figure 2. Exaggerated illustration of the condition of the surface, with the overlying corrosion shown in green.

When the surface is cleaned with an abrasive, typically driven using an air stream to sandblast the surface, the particles will impact and distort the surface. Thus while the majority of the corrosion will be removed by the impact and scouring action of the abrasive, some will not. Further the impact of the abrasive particles will bend over the weaker structures on the surface as well as peeling over some of the metal on the surface.


Figure 3. Electron microscope picture of a piece of metal on the edge of a pass by an abrasive laden stream, so that the action of the individual particles in cutting into and plowing the surface can be seen. Note that this peels over metal edges, for example at the arrows.

The peeling over of the surface, and the flattening of it give the shine that used to be the sign that the job had been effectively done. There are, however, two disadvantages to this. The first is that by distorting the surface, the bending over of the metal traps small pockets of corrosion within the surface layer of the metal.


Figure 4. Representation of the metal surface after it has been cleaned with abrasive. Note the folding over of metal to trap corrosion products. The abrasive particles are also not small enough to penetrate into the smallest tendrils of corrosion migrating into the metal, and these pockets (green) also are trapped.

With corrosion already embedded in the surface, before it is painted, that will develop immediately and thus the relatively short time before it undercuts the paint and causes it to fall off. There is also another reason for this. As air pressure is increased to speed up the cleaning, and give that “shinier” surface it smooths the surface and makes it more difficult to anchor the paint on the metal. This was shown by F.W. Neville (and is quoted in the book “Blast Cleaning and Allied Processes, by H.J. Plaster) with this table:


Figure 5. Relative paint pull strength as a function of the pressure of the air driving the sandblasting stream in pre-cleaning the surface of the old paint, prior to repainting.

As the table shows, the higher the air pressure then the smoother the surface, and the poorer the bond made with the paint.

Now consider what happens when a high-pressure jet cleans the surface. The water does not have the power to distort the metal, but rather does have the ability to penetrate all the cracks and pits on the surface, and flush them clean. As a result the surface is left rough (to give a good paint bond) and corrosion free.


Figure 6. Illustration of the relative condition in which a high-pressure waterjet will leave the surface.

One of the difficulties that early proponents such as Lydia had in getting the technique accepted, however, lay in the cleanliness of the surface. Because the metal had not been distorted back into a smooth upper surface, it does not reflect light in the “shiny” manner that an abrasive cleaned surface does. Thus to those trained to the latter, it did not appear clean. There had to be a considerable amount of demonstration, explanation and training before it was accepted that this “grey” surface was actually cleaner. And there are now standards, issued by the Steel Structure Painting Council, that recognize this.


Figure 7. A primer coated plate (left) that has been cleaned to white metal (right) using a high pressure waterjet.

Note that actual microphotos of abrasive and waterjet cleaned metal surfaces can be found in the paper by Howlett and Dupuy (Howlett & Dupuy, NACE Corrosion/92, paper No. 253; Mat. Perf, Jan. 1993, p. 38, the waterjet pressure was 30,000 psi).

Iceland's quake activity

After a quiet few months, I see that Iceland is seeing a fair number of earthquakes above 3 in a confined region at the North end of the island. (Those are the events marked with green stars).


Figure 1. Earthquakes in Iceland in the last 24 hours (Iceland Met Office)

A closer look shows how linear the different events have been.


Figure 2. More detailed view of the events shown in Figure 1. (Iceland Met Office).
This post was updated late in the day. (see below the fold).

UPDATE 3. By late evening Wednesday the activity was still strong, though perhaps a few less 4's. (map appended).

UPDATE 4. Friday afternoon and the activity seems to be tapering off a little - and as The Earthquake Report notes quake swarms of this type are quite frequent in the region, and usually peter out after a few days or weeks.

UPDATE 1 Well the situation has not yet stabilized, and as I go to bed, some 12 hours later, the quakes are spreading along the fault line to the mainland.

UPDATE 2. The activity is occurring along the Tjörnes Fraction Zone,, and is being followed and described by Jón Frímann over at the Iceland Geology blog.


Figure 3. The situation at 11 pm Tuesday evening (Missouri time)(Iceland Met Office)

And this is the situation at around the same time on Wednesday evening.


Figure 4. Change in the pattern late Wednesday evening (Iceland Met Office)