Where does oil come from?

[slayr]

I think you’re both confused on different points.

[Clay6x45]

Y'all made my day! thanks!

Wait until I tell him that the entire world would be dead if natural gas freezes. The freezing temp of natural gas is -296.7 F because it is too dry to freeze at warmer temps. LOL!

Don't give your coworker a hard time just because he doesn't really understand the process of extracting natural gas, It doesn't sound like you do either. He was close to right. The natural gas wellheads froze up. It wasn't because the natural gas froze but because of the waste water (byproduct of oil and gas production) in the lines which froze preventing the gas from flowing. Most of them were not properly winterized. Once the blackouts started the pumps also could not repump off the water in the wellheads so even more began to freeze. Lots of money has been spent since this event to winterize everything to prevent it from occurring again. Heat tracing on pipes, insulation, emergency generators to run pumps, etc.

[Greenheadless]

I think you’re both confused on different points.

Glad someone said it. Lots of ‘fake news’ in this thread.

[S-3 Ranch]

Oil does not come from dead organic materials, that was a false narrative

Just like the Bible is a fable

[Kevin]

I think you’re both confused on different points.

No kidding. Phew.

[El General]

Dinosaur juice.

[PYBUCK]

Tell your clueless co worker the reason we had rolling blackouts is because ERCOT had more demand on the system than they could handle so they shut off some power to keep from losing the grid. ERCOT is independent and cannot import power from other areas, so they had no choice but to shut off some demand, they just shut off the wrong demand. The problem arose when some of the power companies shut some of their power generators down for maintenance and ERCOT shut the power off to the wells and plants that provided the fuel for the generators supplying the power to the grid.
He is right natural gas will freeze because it contains water, processed methane gas that the generators and your house run on will not freeze because it is free from water.

[bpa556]

I opened this thread and read the op. I was sure it was written in jest. I continued reading through the posts. Now, just…wow

[kmack]

Simple graphic explanation!

[lovetohunt]

Now that ^^^^^^^^^ is funny

[Smeone]

Tell your clueless co worker the reason we had rolling blackouts is because ERCOT had more demand on the system than they could handle so they shut off some power to keep from losing the grid. ERCOT is independent and cannot import power from other areas, so they had no choice but to shut off some demand, they just shut off the wrong demand. The problem arose when some of the power companies shut some of their power generators down for maintenance and ERCOT shut the power off to the wells and plants that provided the fuel for the generators supplying the power to the grid.
He is right natural gas will freeze because it contains water, processed methane gas that the generators and your house run on will not freeze because it is free from water.

I believe part of the issue with meeting the demand was that well heads froze and the gas could not be collected from the wells and then the lack of gas lowered the ability to power natural gas plants at full capacity and then what you said happened.....they rotated the blackouts and they ended up taking some of the gas processing plants offline (one from Targa Resources at Waha) and then there was even less gas in the lines to power natural gas plants and the process fed itself

if the well heads had been insulated or heated they may have been able to open them up some and supply more gas to meet demand (but right now in a lot of Texas lines are near capacity most of the time is my understanding), but there was no ability to do that because the well heads had already frozen

in my opinion this is why coal still matters.....you can store a month of coal or more right at the power plant and all you need is a loader or some other easy to operate and maintain (and power with onsite back up power) to keep that plant up and running.......and there are multiple ways to get large trains of coal to the plant with the exception of the very short "last mile" right to the plant

you can also buy coal well before demand ramps up to make sure prices are not through the roof

with natural gas the ability to store large amounts at the site is way too expensive and dangerous and there is little to no redundancy in the entire natural gas collection and delivery system.....it is designed to go one way.....well -> processor -> collector lines --> larger lines -> feeder lines to the end user......there is little to no reversing or alternate routing of that system because the gas is where the gas is and the users are where they are

a large modern cleaner coal plant should be in the picture for baseline power with the ability to ramp up a meaningful bit more in times of major demand (and then perhaps have a through check when demand slacks because it was run hard)

natural gas is all fine and good, but there are too many points of failure that are not possible to back up or have alternate delivery for.....issues in the well fields and less gas, issues at a processor and less gas, issues on supply lines especially major ones and less gas, issue in a supply line to a power plant and less gas

in all cases less gas = less power

with coal the ability to store large amounts on site means you eliminate all but "issue with the plant itself" and with natural gas that is still the same issue....with the plant itself not the source of energy for the plant so the type of fuel is not relevant there.....and the ability to have it on site prior to massive demand means you do not suffer price spikes as much as with gas (if you can get the gas)

we need a well rounded and robust power supply system not one that depends on the "fuel of the month" be it natural gas, wind, solar, or anything else (including coal)

[BRUTE 23]

Gas lines will freeze as will all the prod equipment to get it from the ground to the power plant.

Given that most our prod still comes from stripper wells it's very hard to spend the money to winterize them for 1 in 100, 1 in 50, or even 1 in 20 year events.

[Dusty Britches]

When I read BlackHogDown's post (#2) I knew my coworker was partially right, he was just confused about hydrocarbons and the creation. I like to jest my coworker because he's liberal and says some really .... different things. He supports Biden only because he hates Trump. But I digress...

I'm not convinced that there is a finite amount of oil and hydrocarbons, either.

[PondPopper]

Oil was CREATED BY GOD like 100% of everything else in this universe..

Don’t over think it. Man has a way of making even the simple things confusing.

[PondPopper]

..