Letter to the editor: Argument for gas pipeline expansion doesn’t hold water

A letter to the editor on 14th January stated that the recent cold spell proved the need to expand the natural gas pipeline. So what's the problem?

According to ISO - New England, regional grid operators have a system load of about 70% of the cold weather summer peak, and the system is operating normally. There is no shortage of electricity generation capacity and reserve capacity is enough.

Approximately 5% of the power generation of the system in one year is very cold. An increase in oil production in cold weather may cause a sharp increase in temporary pollution, but the annual total emissions of the New England system remains unchanged or declines over the years - This is the result of clean energy investment. Why do you invest billions of dollars in natural gas pipelines to reduce temporary peak emissions? Instead of increasing dependence on fossil fuels, let's invest in clean renewable energy

Prices will rise sharply in cold weather, but there is a possibility that the new gas pipeline will not be able to solve this problem. In the Atlantic Ocean, pipeline capacity is sufficient, prices are still rising rapidly in cold weather. During the last big cold weather in the winter of 2014 - 15 the area's electricity price surpassed New England's electricity price and similar highs appeared in this area in the last few weeks.

Instead of investing $ 1 billion in the pipeline, you can use the existing LNG storage more effectively, invest in energy efficiency, restore the leaked infrastructure, and suppress price spikes.

If the expansion of natural gas pipelines is of economic importance, large oil companies and pipeline companies can invest their own funds to achieve this goal. Instead, they restricted their projects to taxpayer subsidies. If this is dangerous for our own money, we should not allow them to bet with us.

Ironically, the completion of a new oil pipeline is exacerbating the gas supply. According to RBN, the expansion of the Sunrise oil pipeline owned by the Plains All American Pipeline LP began to improve the oil extraction capacity. This will allow for more drilling and finishing and more natural gas. Oversupply brought about other effects on low prices. Drilling operators are often vented, burned, or otherwise leaking natural gas during the drilling operation, which can have environmental and economic impacts. Common sense report by the Wilderness Society and taxpayers, from 2009 to 2015, public drilling workers are sufficient to meet 46.2 billion cubic feet (Bcf) of natural gas or demand for 6.2 million households per year Natural gas was wasted. The average price for this period was $ 3.65 / MMBtu, waste of natural gas was about $ 1.7 billion.

PetroChina has a market share of 71% in the domestic oil and natural gas pipeline. According to the recently filed 20-F file of the US Securities and Exchange Commission, the network has more than 77,600 kilometers (48,200 miles), about two thirds of which are used for natural gas. The main natural gas network is built in three parallel areas called West-East gas pipelines. These assets are integrated into the PetroChina pipeline in December 2015, of which PetroChina holds 72.26%. Temporary income in the sales pipeline is expected to be 24.5 billion yuan, but there is little loss in the first half of this year and we anticipate the annual profit will decline up to 80% in January. International crude oil prices fell, domestic natural gas prices were sluggish. This means that profits could fall to 1 billion yuan in 3 consecutive years to the lowest level since 1996.

Pipelines are an important part of the petrochemical industry. Each well or gas well has at least one short piping system connected to a storage tank, many of which are connected to a long distance pipeline, hundreds or even thousands of miles of products to port or refinery To pump. Of course, the refinery is a complex maze pipeline system that transports raw materials and finished product petroleum products to the sea and tankers through various processes. Pipelayers and Pipe Welders are experts who build and repair these pipe systems.