Wasn’t promoting coal ash golf courses. Just that there is one nearby with no trees. Dominion Power used this site as a dumping ground for coal ash. I haven’t golfed there, but my relatives have, How they got grass to grow there for the greens is beyond me. What’s under that topsoil is frigging toxic. Although I was an investor in the stock (First one I ever bought) I no longer am. Whoopdeefriggin doo. We also have Mount Trashmore 1 and 2. It is trash piled up into a small mountain… Used to have soap box derbys there, Sledding during the occasional snow. No longer allowed. What does this have to do with Texas? They are worse than some states regarding the power grid and the way they dispose of the waste products. More remote places to “Plant it”. A damn big state. And now some in government and power management have asked them to “Fend for themselves” during this cold streak… What a sucky response. How about we don’t pay our taxes and power bills for service that didn’t happen. I feel bad for Texas and the other states that have heard this bullshit. Not a green flag waver by any means, but this shit is beyond belief. My rant is over.
Incineration facilities can be built to power cities and industry. If those incineration power plants are built with safety in mind, they can dispose of mountains of trash and be a steady means to supply energy.
The future of energy generation is Bespoke and Varied.
And I share the sentiment of the mountains of trash choking us all. Whether Texas or anywhere else.
Agree, but there is a problem with the Bottom Ash from incinerators, which may contain a variety of heavy metals and other dangerous materials.
Today the IBA goes into landfill, which is not a permanent solution.
In Singapore the problem has been made more urgent, since the only landfill left is filling up fast and will be full in 2035.
Time to start developing a viable solution is NOW, not when it is full. (That is the Singapore way):
Fly Ash has already been used to make interlocking paving block, used at Tuas Mega Yard, among other places in Singapore.
I see a LNG tanker sailed out of Texas yesterday heading to Mexico. Having worked in the Oil industry for 20 years, I never understood why our government allows oil/LNG exports when we still import large volumes of both. If we didn’t still import yes export all the surplus. Allowing exports now only makes the energy traders rich . It also hurts the US Merchant Marine.
But it fills the political party coffers and in the final analysis that is all that matters.
The quick decision that grid operators made in the early hours of Monday morning to begin what was intended to be rolling blackouts — but lasted days for millions of Texans — occurred because operators were seeing warning signs that massive amounts of energy supply was dropping off the grid.
As natural gas fired plants, utility scale wind power and coal plants tripped offline due to the extreme cold brought by the winter storm, the amount of power supplied to the grid to be distributed across the state fell rapidly.
I don’t think we import any LNG. That’s why all of those import terminals are closed.
We are still importing LNG into Boston and Cove Point.
And the reason we can’t move up there from the Gulf is because there are no Jones Act LNG carriers.
All of the import terminals in the Gulf of Mexico are closed, or have been turned into export terminals.
Here is one of the only times I feel there should be an exemption from the Jones Act build requirements - allow 4 LNG tankers in to the trade perhaps for a set period of time say 6 years.
But the real answer is not to ship LNG to the northeast as that is an incredible waste of energy(to cool it). The Fed’s need to use it’s power to approve pipelines to those areas which need the gas. Show some courage and do the right thing.
Texas produces its own natural gas, supply wasn’t the problem. The gas wasn’t being delivered to customers including power plants because the pipeline system had problems due to the cold.
In Nature there is no waste, everything is transformed. 
The heavy metals will be condensed instead of spread around in the environment, getting into the water supply. It’s harder to deal with diffuse but high levels of toxic waste than it is to deal with compressed materials that can be reutilized in industry or easier to store away from water sources. Most toxic elements exist in Nature. Human intervention merely puts them out in the open.
There are probably some details missing here. Mexico is a net importer of natural gas. Likewise, a net importer of refined petroleum products. They have a good amount of crude oil, but they don’t have the refinement capability. International trade.
US refineries apparently cannot solely process US sweet light crude such as comes from Permian, EagleFord and Bakken feilds. From a 2014 interview ( Why Is the U.S. Still Importing So Much Oil? | StateImpact Texas )
"The light crude oil or the condensate we are exporting is actually much different stuff than your classical medium gravity, API gravity dense crude oil that we are using in our refineries.
"In popular opinion, they’re all rolled into “crude oil.” But they have different compositions and they can not be processed by the same refineries. So, we are trying to export some of the light stuff, so to speak, while we are importing much heavier stuff to process in our refineries.
“Many of our refinieries have been specialized to process much heavier crudes from Venezuela, from Mexico, so you can’t change them overnight. That’s why we’re importing oil and we’re exporting gasoline, lubricants, and other products and at the same time, we’re exporting condensate and light crude.”
Which is why we should be using our friend’s (Canada) heavy syn crude instead of Venezuela’s.
When they say they are specialized to run heavy crudes, that means they’ve invested a ton of money in sulfur units and cokers. They can run sweet crude but need the cheap junk stuff to pay off those investments.
A trader (and I’ve known many) will ship oil 5,000 miles further if the margin is profitable. That’s because they don’t care about the impact on the environment (no cost for that!) and heaven forbid pay American wages and use American ships. They only care American ships when they need the need a American warship to “protect the sea lanes”. God help us.
WTI is cheaper than Brent Crude.
Facts about US import and export of Crude oil and Petroleum Products:
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) - U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA).
There are NO US flag VLCCs in competitive international trade.
Facts about US LNG export and import:
Facts about US LPG export::
https://bpnews.com/index.php/publications/magazine/current-issue/830-u-s-is-world-s-largest-lpg-exporter-but-when-will-market-balance#:~:text=The%20U.S.%20now%20stands%20as,%2C%20up%2040%25%20from%202014.
Facts about US Ethane export:
U.S. Energy Information Administration - EIA - Independent Statistics and Analysis.
There are NO US flag VLNG, VLPG or VLEG Carriers in existence.
Here is why they configured USGC refineries to run heavy (URAL as example).
From today’s market (OilPrice)
WTI Crude $59.24
Brent Crude $62.91 (so much for Brent being cheaper)
Mars US $59.69
Opec Basket $63.43
Urals $42.22
I understand the lack of US Flag VLCC and LNG tankers. Hence the reason to allow a few in to the JONES ACT trade on a temporary basis. It makes no sense to ship in LNG from overseas (Russia) to Boston than to ship on a US Flag from the USGC. Again there is no price being put on the extra emissions by shipping 2,000 miles further (But there should be). If there were, a US Flag ship would be competitive
There are no “Jones Act reason” why US owners of VLCCs and LNG carriers could re-flag some of their existing foreign built and flagged ship to US flag and put them into the US Crude oil export and import trade. The same applies for LNG/LPG/Ethane export. (Or any other trade to/from US ports.
PS> Foreign Owners have long since set up US subsidiaries to own and manage US flag ships to take advantage of the generous subsidies and preferential cargo available. Why not also VLCC etc.
That doesn’t solve the problem of getting LNG from the GoM to the NE Coast.
But if there were US flag VLNGCs carrying export LNG to Europe they could carry Arctic Russian or Norwegian LNG back to Boston. At least they’ll save on ballast voyages and total GHG emission.
Back to the subject of this thread, the cold snap:
Do you feel it down there in Texas and GoM??
Remember this?