Category: Future of Oil and Gas

What Does Energy Transition Mean To You? 9/18/2023

What Does Energy Transition Mean To You?

Payne Institute Faculty Fellow Jim Crompton is a co-host on this podcast hosting Dr. Ershaghi, Director of the Ershaghi Center for Energy Transition (E-CET), on the history of the energy transitions; where we stand in the race to net zero; the role that governments, private sector, and individuals play in the energy transition; and the importance of combating misinformation.  Also featured, Mathew Davis, a Master’s student in petroleum engineering at USC, on how he defines energy transition and the role that petroleum engineering plays in the energy transition.  September 18, 2023.  

How Big Oil’s wastewater could fuel the EV revolution 9/12/2023

How Big Oil’s wastewater could fuel the EV revolution

Payne Institute Faculty Fellow Ian Lange contributes to this article about how since oil and gas drilling began nearly 150 years ago, the salty wastewater it produces has been a nuisance for operators. Now, the electric vehicle revolution could turn the industry’s billions of barrels of brine into dollars. Oil and gas companies are eyeing their own byproduct — along with naturally occurring brine found deep underground — as a source of lithium, a highly sought-after metal needed to make EV batteries.  September 12, 2023.

MISSION IMPOSSIBLE: THE INFLUENCE OF INCUMBENT INDUSTRIES ON MISSION-ORIENTED INNOVATION POLICY TARGETING CARBON LOCK-IN 9/8/2023

MISSION IMPOSSIBLE: THE INFLUENCE OF INCUMBENT INDUSTRIES ON MISSION-ORIENTED INNOVATION POLICY TARGETING CARBON LOCK-IN 

Payne Institute Fellow Sara Hastings-Simon and Eliot Tretter write about how mission-oriented innovation to address climate change, a moonshot or Manhattan project for climate, is an approach that promises to address climate change by achieving net  zero carbon emissions. However, even with significant technical advances, successfully reaching this goal would dramatically reduce the market for fossil fuels.  This paper explores how mission-oriented innovation potentially impacts and is impacted
by incumbent industries and describes how in the case of Alberta’s fossil-fuel industry, regional incumbents influenced the establishment of a mission they saw as a direct threat to their market.  September 8, 2023.

How Colorado’s oil and gas industry helps and hurts the economy 8/30/2023

How Colorado’s oil and gas industry helps and hurts the economy

Payne Institute Faculty Fellow Ian Lange contributes to this article about how economic benefits, like jobs and tax revenue, weigh against costs, like clean-up of environmental damage.  As Colorado’s oil and gas industry plans to drill hundreds of new wells along the Front Range in the coming years, residents want to know how the financial benefits and costs of those operations will affect their lives. The answer is complicated, and not all economists agree.  August 30, 2023.

Proposed West Africa-Europe Gas Pipelines Will Fail Without a Radical Shift in Thinking

PROPOSED WEST AFRICA-EUROPE GAS PIPELINES WILL FAIL WITHOUT A RADICAL SHIFT IN THINKING

Payne Institute ESG Researcher Baba Freeman writes about how the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 injected a renewed urgency into Western European countries’ energy security concerns and led to an increase in demand for non-Russian sources of oil and gas. Consequently, Europe is expected to take a larger share of future LNG supplies even as greenfield pipeline projects are being conceived to supply West African gas to Western Europe. These projects include the Trans-Sahara Gas Pipeline (TSGP) and the Nigeria-Morocco Gas Pipeline (NMGP) but may not be able to adequately meet these projects’ future obligations.  August 29, 2023. 

The need for balance in the regulation of the oil and natural gas industry 8/29/2023

The need for balance in the regulation of the oil and natural gas industry

Payne Institute Faculty Fellows Jennifer Miskimins and Jim Crompton write about how to get the balance between environmental action and economic reality right, we all need more collaboration.   Over the past several years, Colorado has implemented precedent-setting regulations, from baseline groundwater testing and monitoring, to air regulations targeting methane leak detection and repair. But we still have a long way to go, and while it’s not an easy road for regulators, it’s crucial we stay the course.  August 29, 2023.  

Olympus deal is key first for RSG market 8/8/2023

Olympus deal is key first for RSG market

Payne Institute Program Manager Brad Handler writes about how the long-term deal signed by Olympus Energy marked an important evolution in the development of a market for environmentally responsible US natural gas. Olympus Energy, a private upstream and midstream natural gas developer, entered into a long-term agreement with natural gas marketing firm Tenaska Marketing Ventures to sell ‘responsibly sourced gas’ (RSG).  August 8, 2023.

Big Oil’s Talent Crisis: High Salaries Are No Longer Enough 8/6/2023

Big Oil’s Talent Crisis: High Salaries Are No Longer Enough

Payne Institute Faculty Fellow Jennifer Miskimins contributes to this article about how energy companies scramble to attract engineers as young workers fret over climate and job security.  At U.S. colleges, the pool of new entrants for petroleum-engineering programs has shrunk to its smallest size since before the fracking boom began more than a decade ago. European universities, which have historically provided many of the engineers for companies with operations across the Middle East and Asia, are seeing similar trends. August 6, 2023.  

The Economics of Natural Gas Flaring and Methane Emissions in US Shale: An Agenda for Research and Policy 7/26/2023

The Economics of Natural Gas Flaring and Methane Emissions in US Shale: An Agenda for Research and Policy

Mark Agerton, Payne Faculty Fellow Ben Gilbert, and Gregory B. Upton Jr. write about how natural gas flaring and methane emissions (F&M) are linked environmental issues for US shale oil and gas operations. Flaring refers to burning natural gas when regulatory, infrastructure, and market constraints make it infeasible to capture it when drilling for oil. In this paper, we lay out an agenda for researchers and policy makers. We describe why F&M are linked, both physically and in terms of policy. July 26, 2023.

Today’s energy economy is building Colorado’s zero-carbon future 7/26/2023

Today’s energy economy is building Colorado’s zero-carbon future

Payne Institute Program Managers Anna Littlefield and Simon Lomax and Director Morgan Bazilian write about how the transition to a zero-carbon economy may look like a case of “out with the old, in with the new.” Dig deeper and the reality is much different, however.   Many of the skills, technologies and scientific research that support the energy sources we use today are also essential for developing the new energy sources of tomorrow.  July 26, 2023.