The exploding supply of NGLs can this stuff be called oil

John Kingston at "The Barrel" has a post on the growing production of natural gas liquids - The exploding supply of NGLs: can this stuff be called oil?.

If The Oil Drum were still around, the contributors would certainly be talking about a new ESAI study.

The Boston-based consultancy put out a press release today, touting a new report it has produced that says by 2023, NGL production will account for more than one-quarter of the world’s liquids output.

To which the peak oil believers might say: exactly.

One argument often made by the peak oil school is that the rise in liquids output around the world does not eliminate any suggestion that oil production has peaked, because so much of what is coming out of the ground isn’t really oil. Instead, much of it is NGLs, which are far less versatile in what can be produced from them. Specifically, they have virtually no value in making distillates, the oil product most in demand in rising economies.

an increasing supply of natural gas from areas as diverse as the Middle East and Australia is pumping out a lot of NGLs along with that rise, and that’s adding to the percentage of NGLs in the total world liquids pool. You can see it in the price: NWE propane now runs about 60% of the price of Brent, and in 2008, it averaged close to 70%.

The question for the global market is whether innovation can take some way of making what could be a growing surplus of ultra-light petroleum products like NGLs or condensate and figure out a way to help them satisfy other petroleum demand. The rising supplies of these types of ultra-light petroleum feedstocks is great news for the petrochemical industry, particularly in the US, but it does take something off the ebullience of those proclaiming the end of peak oil. All barrels most certainly are not alike.

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Peak oil can fuel a change for the better

The SMH has a rare mainstream media opinion piece on peak oil (albeit of the doomy circa-2005 variety) - Peak oil can fuel a change for the better.

The advent of peak oil means we should prepare for a downscaling of our highly energy and resource-intensive lifestyles.

What is peak oil and why does it matter? And what effect will it have on the Western lifestyles we take for granted? These are not questions that many people are asking themselves yet, but this decade is going to change everything. Peak oil is upon us.

Peak oil does not mean that the world is about it run out of oil. It refers to the point at which the supply of oil can no longer increase. There is lots of the stuff left; its just getting much more difficult to find and extract, which means it is getting very hard, and perhaps impossible, to increase the overall flow of oil out of the ground. When the flow can no longer increase, that is peak oil. Supply will then plateau for a time and eventually enter terminal decline. This is the future that awaits us, because oil is a finite, non-renewable resource.

The prospect of peak oil is no longer a fringe theory held only by a few scaremongers. It is a geological reality that has been acknowledged even by conservative, mainstream institutions such as the International Energy Agency, the UK Industry Task Force and the United States military. Even the chief executive of one of the worlds largest oil companies, Total, said recently he expected demand to outstrip supply as early as 2014 or 2015. Given how fundamental oil is to our economies, this signifies the dawn of a new era in the human story.

While the supply of oil is stagnating, demand is still growing considerably. China and India are industrialising at an extraordinary pace, requiring huge amounts of oil, and even in the Middle East and Russia – the main oil exporting regions – oil consumption is growing fast. What this means is that competition is escalating over access to the limited supply, and basic economic principles dictate that when supply stagnates and demand increases, oil is going to get much more expensive – a situation that is already playing out.

The problem of peak oil, therefore, is not that we are running out of oil, but that we have already run out of cheap oil. Currently the world consumes about 89 million barrels a day, or 32 billion barrels a year. Those mind-boggling figures are why oil is called the lifeblood of industrial civilisation. It should be clear enough, then, that when oil gets more expensive, all things dependent on oil get more expensive. Since almost all products today are dependent on oil for transport (among other things, such as plastic), the age of expensive oil will eventually price much global trade out of the market. Peak oil probably means peak globalisation.

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How cells can cheat death

To begin with, we have to point out that for a cell to cheat death is usually not a good thing. The reason is that cell death is usually the result of a process called apoptosis, and this process has been carefully developed (by evolution) to dispose of cells that have become "sick" because of infection (by a virus) or damage that can occur to the cells DNA in a variety of ways. Your body needs healthy cells to function, not sick ones. Especially it does not need cells with damaged DNA, which may well become cancerous.

Apoptosis is needed in other contexts as well. In a developing embryo apoptosis is needed to remove unnecessary tissue. In addition, failure of apoptosis can lead to autoimmune diseases as well as cancer. (This is why some anti-cancer drugs are also able to treat some autoimmune diseases.)

The following research announcement, which well look at in more detail, has a nice capsule summary of apoptosis.

Cells Re-energize To Come Back From The Brink Of Death

Apoptosis is triggered by a variety of factors, including gene mutations that can make the cell become cancerous. During apoptosis, the membrane covering the cells mitochondria develop holes and leak a molecule called cytochrome c, which triggers the activity of enzymes called caspases. In turn, caspases trigger a series of events that kills the cell.

To amplify a little, here are some of the conditions that can initiate a cells apoptosis program:

• P53 protein may detect damaged DNA during the G1 phase of the cell division cycle. If it does not prove possible to repair the damaged DNA, P53 can invoke apoptosis.
  
• The cytokine TNF (tumor necrosis factor) produced by the immune system (specifically, activated macrophages) is an external signal to initiate apoptosis. As the name implies, this is another anti-cancer mechanism.
  
• Signals produced by cytotoxic T cells of the immune system can also induce apoptosis. This may occur in response to a virus-infected cell. (Much more on T cells: here.)
  

However, there is a weak spot in the apoposis process: it requires the presence of caspase enzymes. If something has blocked production of essential caspases (which some tumors are able to do), then apoptosis wont work.

Because of this, nature (i. e. evolution) has provided a backup mechanism for programmed cell death, one that does not rely on caspases. The mechanism is called, appropriately, caspase-independent cell death (CICD), and the research announcement mentioned above has this to say about it:

The process by which the membranes develop holes--mitochondrial outer membrane permeability (MOMP)--is often the "point of no return" for self-destruction, said Douglas Green, Ph.D., chair of the St. Jude Immunology department and the studys senior author. MOMP triggers apoptosis, but if apoptosis fails because there is no caspase available, the backup program called caspase-independent cell death (CICD) takes over the process.

Previous research has shown that cells that become cancerous lack caspase and other proteins needed to support apoptosis after MOMP releases cytochrome c. But this victory over death is short-lived if CICD is activated.

Unfortunately, tumors (successful ones anyway) eventually develop the ability to cheat this death program as well:

However, some cancerous cells not only dodge death from apoptosis by eliminating caspase activation, but they also foil CIDC. "Our study sought to understand how a cancer cell without caspase activation bypasses CICD as well," Green said.

The St. Jude team discovered that a cell that lacks caspase activation and cannot undergo apoptosis increases the levels of an enzyme called GAPDH in order to counteract CICD. GAPDH appears to prevent CICD by supporting the functioning of the mitochondria and triggering the activity of certain genes that prevent or repair cell damage. The findings also suggest that the increase in GAPDH provides energy to increase autophagy--the process by which a cell "chews up" debris and broken components, such as damaged mitochondria. After disposing of damaged mitochondria the cell can replace these vital components.

"We found that in the absence of caspase activation, cells that avoided CICD took about a week or so to begin multiplying again," Green said. "This might represent the time it takes for the cell to restore enough mitochondria to allow the cell to function normally."

Cancer cells are (unfortunately) amazing in their resourcefulness. Of course, this results from a kind of evolutionary process, in which cancer cells that are successful at cheating death and reproducing are those which have developed, by chance, the necessary mutations.

The role played by mitochondria and caspases in apoptosis is quite important for an understanding of both cancer and autoimmune diseases. Its worth remembering the connection, since further research will certainly tell us a lot more about these interrelated processes. Heres an example of earlier research on the subject: Proteins are Key to Cell Death in Heart Disease, Stroke and Degenerative Conditions

Tags: apoptosis, caspase, mitochondria, cancer

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Can shale gas lead to reduced greenhouse gas emissions

Some energy analysts say that increased shale gas production can lead to reductions in greenhouse gas emissions because natural gas produces less greenhouse gas emissions as compared to coal, so swapping coal fired power plants with natural gas fired plants would have positive impact on climate change.

This can be only partially true, because cheap and readily available natural gas will likely become a major stumbling block to renewable energy sources as well because natural gas, regardless of the fact that it emits less greenhouse emissions than coal, still emits significant share of harmful greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. What this means is that shale gas can only help our climate with proper policies, the ones that also promote higher use of renewable energy sources.

The truth is pretty simple, namely that natural gas production and consumption has significantly higher emissions than not just renewable energy sources but also nuclear power.

Some other factor also needs to be carefully examined here and this is the entire process of shale gas production. What policy makers must not forget is that extracting, processing and transporting the fuel can result in emissions of methane, a greenhouse gas lot more potent than carbon dioxide. The precise level of these methane emissions is still uncertain, with extensive study yet to be performed and published.

The policy makers need to realize that the increased shale gas production can also lead to displacement of zero-emission sources such as renewable energy sources and nuclear energy. Therefore, the right energy policy in terms of being aimed at the reduction of harmful greenhouse gases needs to find the way to successfully implement both clean energy sources and shale gas, without the displacement of any kind. What is also very important  is also the fact that methane emissions from shale gas production need to be kept low in order to maximize the potential benefits of natural gas.

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