So it seems that European leadership is unexplainably calm after both NS1 & NS2 have been blown up and now relying on timely LNG supplies (not) and /or European nat-gas “stored reserves”…(double not)
use-LESS European supposedly stored nat-gas ´reserves´ (not)
Europeans know bloody well a rough winter is coming, but no one has warned them that the supposed 90% “reserves” that would sorta get them through okay will not be available as announced. There are 2 main reasons for this which were already explained to boring death and intricate depth at Ref #5
https://thesaker.is/the-euthanized-european-nat-gas-reserves/
The first reason #1 is the impossibility of constant RE-pressurization of such “stored” nat-gas reserves in order to maintain the required sub-surface driving force push to produce it onto surface. Now, along broad areas of Germany and Northern Europe the lack of pipeline nat-gas flow will not allow to comply this requirement. Without pipeline nat-gas, at the very best only 25% to 30% of the “supposed” 90% reserves could possibly ever be timely recovered and only very slowly through a period of time stretched out in months. The culprit is the mandatory DE-pressurization whenever such underground reserves are produced onto surface (plus sub-surface losses) with the consequent geometrical drawdown of pressure. With a decreasing sub-surface pressure as driving force, ever smaller and slower nat-gas volumes can be produced onto surface or even none at all per circumstances and operational requirements.
The second reason #2 is the current impossibility in many areas of now having the much required constant massive King Kong pipeline surface flow to adequately push along and warm up the underground reserves that could be produced onto surface by pressure differential when RE-pressurized enough and if all the other requirements are met. This has never ever been tried out by anyone before anywhere near at this scale and without prior notice as later explained. Now suffice to say that the impact will be enormously negative and that Europeans are not anywhere close to being aware of this. All they get to hear is that “
our 90% stored nat-gas reserves will get us through this winter if we just save up consumption a bit ”. No they won´t and below it is proven with hard figures. Read my lips ugly “
methane hydrates” nightmares will be the new name of the game and it will not be fun, trust me. More later, just bear with me.
high school physics
The problem starts when bureaucratic ignoramuses (politicians et al) dream up the stupid idea that nat-gas reserves can be used as a 100% substitute for nat-gas flowing feedstocks such as thru surface pipelines. They simply cannot, period. Actually, God invented nat-gas reserves as a supplement to – never a substitute of (NOT) – flowing nat-gas feedstocks so that in high demand season (winter) the cheaper nat-gas reserves piled up during the low consumption season (summer) could be added to the main pipeline flow by 10% approx. This would help to satisfy the higher winter demand and also to lower the average yearly cost. Nat-gas reserves are good for nothing more than that and definetly not a substitute of surface flowing feedstocks. No matter how hard they try or how frequently they model their brand new dark colored turtle necks, politicians both sides of the Atlantic will not change that, I promise. Nat-gas sub-surface reserves can never ever be adequately produced onto surface by themselves and can only be ´lightly´ and slowly ADDED onto pre-existing actively flowing surface feedstocks such as pipeline flows nothing more. Anything else is a dream ready to become a very ugly nightmare.
misnomer
Something certainly widespread and that may be misleading — for which I am not responsible of — is using the term “storage” for such ´reserves´ as “storage” in a warehouse or closet. It is
not anywhere near that. A better term would be “lung” but then we get the ambiguity derived from the organ that living beings breathe with. But at any rate such nat-gas reserves are not kept like you and I — and our wives — would keep dishes in a cupboard shelf. It´s not easy to explain it just with words, but still allow me to try. Water plays a role of course and that is why
before injecting down to underground storage caverns the nat-gas MUST be thoroughly and intensively dehydrated as much as technically possible which is difficult to do and very expensive. Furthermore, during underground storage such nat-gas picks up even additional water content from subsurface structures which could be coped with (maybe, yet again it depends) if they had readily available a surface super King Kong flow — as later explained — to thermically cushion it and incorporate it into its MASSIVE mass. But then, by not having such driving force No. 2, means being able to produce such undergound stored nat-gas onto surface
only with driving force No.1, namely pressure differential.
Then, with only No.1 driving force available to extract such underground nat-gas reserves… well (a) the consequent pressure drop taking place as the first nat-gas sub-surface “reserves” get to surface will mean that the process has to be very slow and (b) lots of nat-gas will be left behind underground because of gradual pressure drawdown will reduce and weaken the upward push required and (c) you better be VERY carefull with veeeery sloooow production (meaning not enough when most needed) because a sudden methane DE-compression will FREEZE up everything and also producing methane hydrates a well-known nightmare of operational engineers which would clog the pipeworks forever
Furthermore this has never ever been attempted (what for ?) and the variations of the different animals in the storage facilities “zoo” I describe below do not allow for any standardized procedure for simultaneous input from different sources also managed differently with no training, no coordination, nor awareness of the nature of the problem.
But it gets to be MUCH worse…
not yours
Any underground stored nat-gas that may possibly be recovered — not much, as we shall see right below — will be sold not to the local community of nearby consumers but rather to the wholesale
market through the pipeworks grid described later in greater detail. So that if Germans living in, say, Frankfurt for whatever reason feel they´ll sorta be okay by having such and such large volume nat-gas storage facility close-by, well… they are freezing wrong because the nat-gas to be potentially produced from such large size Frankfurt storage will be very democratically distributed thru the grid (at market prices) and not thru a direct connection to nearby Frankfurt homes.
Jinglemerkel Santakaputt
In 2021 Germany spent 100 bcm of nat-gas (approx.) with a maximum storage volume capacity of 24 bcm which German officials now say is filled up to 90% meaning that they have 22 bcm of nat-gas available throughout Germany. BTW, no specific distribution breakdown is ever given just total values for all of Germany which could eventually mean a very UN-even problematic distribution. Furthermore, saying and repeating that is fully misleading as you could have your car´s gas tank 90% filled but you would still require MANY gas tanks for you to get to destination. Be that as it may, total 2021 consumption from October to February in Germany was 52 bcm with an estimated breakdown of 26 bcm for the October, November and December period and an additional 13 bcm during January plus yet another 13 bcm for February. Total = 52 bcm. Now then, out of the 22 bcm supposedly already ´stored´ approximately a minimum 30% cannot ever be recovered (probably even more) so that means that only 15 bcm
maximum are available to cover consumption only for the months of October and November… as by mid-December (Christmas comes to mind) even in the best scenario under current circumstances Germany would run out of available nat-gas, stop. Sorry it´s math.
Some EU countries such as Cyprus, Estonia, Finland, Greece, Ireland, Lithuania, Luxembourg, and Slovenia have ZERO nat-gas storage capacity of their own and basically depend upon solidarity from other EU countries…
Ref #5
https://youtu.be/gplfrKT627k Ref #6
https://www.reuters.com/article/europe-gas-kemp-idAFL1N2Z81RA
Yet more on the use-LESS European nat-gas “reserves” (not)
In practice — per Yogi Berra – today´s underground European “stored” nat-gas reserves cannot be conveniently extracted from sub-surface. The reason is, that in order to achieve it, these ´reserves´ would need to
(1) be constantly RE-pressurized as briefly explained before, which now without NS1 and NS2 cannot ever be done through large parts of Germany and throughout Northern Europe with the consequent enormous impact this implies
and
(2) have abundant Russian pipeline nat-gas constantly flowing thus allowing to add-on such pressurized stored underground reserves to a comparatively
far larger surface flow. This is the only possible practical way to extract underground nat-gas and also to distribute such buried reserves through the surface distribution system pipeworks.
By themselves, without the help of flowing pipeline nat-gas, such stored nat-gas reserves can hardly be produced onto surface and still with lots of negative impact. To attempt it would be an experiment never ever tried out before in the history of physics — or politics for that matter. “
A bloody unnecessary experiment” Sir Isaac Newton would have mumbled in a low-tone whisper. Without a surface pipeline full of massively abundant flowing nat-gas (now absent) the supposed European “reserves” will mostly just end up sitting pretty underground as they are today, period.
constant RE-pressurization
Constant RE-pressurization of subsurface stored nat-gas is required to maintain enough (large) volume and enough underground pressure as No.1 driving force to produce it onto surface. This is needed to compensate for the unavoidable and also constant DE-pressurization due to underground losses (thermal, friction, permeation, dissipation, fissures, cracks, porosity, etc.) and pressure drawdown (loss) produced every time that sub-surface reserves are brought onto surface. Without RE-pressurization, future required pressure would not be available and possible surface soil collapse or subsidence could lead to seismographic activity nobody wants such as with fracking. But furthermore this driving force No.1 also needs an active and fully operational surface pipeline to bring in nat-gas for re-injection of underground nat-gas reserves, namely driving force No.2. Besides, whenever the traditional surface pipeline inflow is interrupted or non-existant (such as today in Northern Germany and Northern Europe) storage nat-gas will also be depleted way earlier because it was not ever supposed to constitute the only winter load by itself… and as explained later no surface King Kong express bull-dozing effect would exist for surface pipeworks distribution.
