Bird’s-Eye-View of Largest Floating Structure Ever Built
gcaptain.com
gcaptain.com
I guess there are some artificial floating islands that could lay claim to being the largest or longest, too (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floating_island#Artificial_i...)
I am still, however, in awe of the magnitude of the project!
25 years < 50 years
OTOH... the ~8 GW you mentioned is thermal power, if it is electricity you want, you will need to spend another $12-15 billion on power generation plants (and infrastructure such as LNG tankers, import terminals etc.). And then, with an exceptionally efficient combined cycle plant, you only get abt 8*55% = 4.4 GW of electric power (but it is "on demand").
Furthermore, the cost of producing the gas is not just the cost of the vessel - you need to drill wells and connect them to the vessel via pipelines/manifolds/risers. You need to pay for the operations, maintenance and repairs. And to begin with, you need to explore for gas, spending hundreds of millions of dollars with no guarantee of success.
By the time you consider the full picture, solar power is competitive with gas for electric power generation, more so in some places (like Australia, where Tony Abbott is going full retard on renewable energy) than others (like Germany, which leads the world in installed PV capacity).
In 2012 something like 3.5 GW were installed for something like $12 billion USD.
See the graph titled "U.S. Solar Industry Forcast" for output
See the graph titled "Value of Yearly U.S. Solar Instalations" for cost
Personally, I hope that the US solar instalations will last more than 25 years. I also hope that Shell is paying Australia for the gass that is being pumped out. I presume that the total cost will be about the same as solar. However, natural gass is really usefull stuff and can be shipped and stored more efficiently than electricity. So even though the price is about the same as solar, the value is higher.
Installed capacity would seem to suggest peak MW. Later on in the report they say that 490MW of "combined electric capacity" in schools equates to 642 GWh, which suggests that they're figuring annual output to be about 15% of installed capacity.
So, is that 3.5GW of panels (in which case about 0.5GW averaged over a day) or 3.5GW of average capacity?
Why? Australia doesn't hold title to the oceans.
200 miles is standard for an Exclusive Economic Zone.
See eg. : http://www.smh.com.au/business/woodside-petroleum-calls-for-...
To put things in perspective. This vessel is planned to extract 110,000 barrels per day. The world currently consumes 85-90 million barrels per day. In other words, this vessel will supply 0.1% of the current demand for oil.
Calculation makeover: We consume about 50 million BOE of natural gas per day[1], so this vessel will fulfill 0.2% of the current demand.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_natural_g...
Unless I'm doing the math wrong (which is quite possible), this facility alone will produce ~2% global LNG production. (This facility has a capacity of up to 5.3 mmtpa, while global production of LNG in 2014 was 246 mmtpa.)
I'm not saying it's dwarfing global supply, but a single facility producing 2% of the global output is a pretty big deal.
Of course, global LNG output will probably be significantly higher by the time this facility comes on-line, and 5.3 mtpa is its maximum production.
At any rate, it doesn't really detract from what you were saying overall, but this is a very major player in the LNG market.
Methane is _much_ more abundant than liquid hydrocarbons. There are many more ways to produce methane geologically/biologically than there are to produce liquid hydrocarbons.
To elaborate, there are three main end-member types of source rocks (organic-rich shales, etc that produce hydrocarbons when heated). All of them will produce methane once temperatures are high enough. However, only two of these are capable of producing oil at all, and that's only in a relatively narrow window of temperatures. Furthermore, type III source rocks (land-derived organics) are the most abundant of the three types, and they only produce gas.
Interestingly, if you look at current proven global reserves, you'll find they don't reflect the difference in abundance. (~1.7 trillion barrels liquids vs. ~1.2 trillion barrels oil-equivalent of gas) This is because exploration and development focuses on the more profitable liquid hydrocarbons.
There are several _huge_ gas fields (>100 TCF... That's mind-blowingly large) that have been discovered but never appraised, developed, or produced. There's a lot of others that are likely to be of a similar size but have never been drilled at all. The reason is purely due to the way oil and gas are traded.
From an economic perspective, natural gas (methane) is typically sold on long-term contracts. There's no global market for natural gas. It's not a commodity. Instead, all trading is region-specific. You can only sell what you can deliver, and natural gas has to be delivered through pipelines.
Therefore, if the natural gas resources are not close to a heavily populated area, you can't sell them. These are referred to as "stranded".
LNG (liquified natural gas), however, can be (and is starting to be) sold globally as a commodity similar to liquid hydrocarbons. Southeast Asia and Japan have a large demand for natural gas and relatively limited supply. Furthermore, the gap between demand and supply is predicted to grow over the coming decades.
Australia has large "stranded" gas fields that Chevron and Shell have held rights to for many decades. Australia also happens to be close to the markets with the greatest predicted demand for LNG. Based on this, the super-majors (Exxon, Chevron, Shell, BP, Total) have started to pour _huge_ amounts of money into LNG facilities. Australia is currently home to the largest of these projects due to its location relative to markets with the largest demand.
At any rate, there's the big picture in a nutshell. I'm a exploration geologist in the oil industry, so I have a slightly different perspective than some, but hopefully that gives you some idea of the reasons behind projects like this.
Interesting question. Why would anyone invest in helping to bring about catastrophic climate changes?
It's also not flammable or explosive in its liquid form, so I suspect you won't see a dramatic explosive failure either.
Of course, it could start leaking and burn when mixed with enough air, but I can't help but wonder how sustainable a fire that would be: The air/fuel mix would not be controlled at all, and would probably quickly burn and stop.