Chevron Uses Solar-Thermal Steam to Extract Oil in California

Bloomberg has an article on enhanced oil recovery using solar thermal energy in California - Chevron Uses Solar-Thermal Steam to Extract Oil in California.

Chevron Corp. (CVX), the second-largest U.S. oil company, began extracting crude from a southern California field using steam produced by a 29-megawatt solar- thermal power plant. BrightSource Energy Inc.’s system uses mirrors to focus sunlight on a boiler at Chevron’s Coalinga, California, enhanced oil recovery project, the solar company said in a statement after extraction began today.

Solar-thermal technology companies such as BrightSource are targeting industrial users in the oil-recovery and food- processing industries as customers as well as power generation. Mining and metals processing are also very promising, especially in remote areas where power can also be generated along with heat, Charlie Ricker, BrightSource senior vice president of business development, said today in an interview. ...

The Coalinga plant consists of 3,822 mirror systems, or heliostats, each with two 10-foot (3-meter) by 7-foot mirrors mounted on a 6-foot steel pole focusing light on a 327-foot solar tower. Steam created by the heat is fed into the oil reservoir, making it easier to bring to the surface. The system began generating steam in August, Kristin Hunter, a spokeswoman for Oakland, California-based BrightSource, said today in an e- mail.

Areva SA’s Areva Solar, Seville, Spain-based Abengoa SA, Erlangen, Germany-based Solar Millennium AG (S2M) and Burbank, California-based eSolar Inc. are competing with BrightSource with their own solar-thermal technology. Glasspoint Solar Inc., based in Fremont, California, makes solar steam generators for the oil and gas industry using mirrored troughs inside of glasshouse enclosures to protect the mirrors.

Enhanced oil recovery, or EOR, fits very well with solar temperatures, Glasspoint Vice President John O’Donnell, said today in an interview.

Some 32 percent of California’s industrial and commercial gas use is for EOR as its use grows in the U.S. and all over the world, O’Donnell said. The state produces about 40% of its oil using EOR and in a few years that will grow to 60%, he said.

The company can produce heat for EOR for about $3 per million British thermal units, compared with about $4 for a comparable natural-gas plant in the U.S. and between $10 to $12 for other conventional solar thermal technologies, O’Donnell said. “We are the only ones below natural gas right now in the U.S.”

Read More

Chevron's Wheatstone LNG project gets go ahead

The ABC reports that Chevron's Wheatstone liquefied natural gas project in WA has been given the go-ahead - Wheatstone LNG project to make Aus second largest global producer.

The Chevron-operated Wheatstone liquefied natural gas (LNG) project will officially go ahead.

The project was given the federal environmental approval last week and the outcome of a final investment decision (FID) of $29 billion by Chevron was really little more than a formality.

Wheatstone is a joint venture project with Chevron 73.6 per cent, Apache 13 per cent, Kuwait Foreign Petroleum Co (KUFPEC) 7 per cent, Shell Australia 6.4 per cent.

The Wheatstone gas field is about 250 kilometres off the coast of Onslow, north-west Western Australia.

Gas from the field will be pumped via subsea pipelines to the onshore processing facility just north of the town of Onslow.

The project has come on stream in record time, from discovery in 2004 to first gas production by 2016.

Up to 3,500 jobs and 3,000 indirect jobs will be created during the construction phase of approximately six years.

A permanent workforce of 300 will operate the rigs and plant.

WA Premier Colin Barnett says Wheatstone will confirm WA as the world's second-largest supplier of LNG behind Quatar, and CEO of Shell, Ann Pickard, went one step further.

She says Australia will soon strip the title of leading producer from Qatar, in the Middle-East, within the decade.

Federal Government counting the royalties before they flow

The Federal Resources Minister, Martin Ferguson, says the revenue stream from the Wheatstone project is estimated at $20 billion over the 20-year life of the project.

And he welcomes the commitment by the company to spend $17 billion on Australian goods and services over the lift of the project. "The investment of just under $30 billion means that we now have $140 billion committed in Australia to new LNG investments" he says.

Read More