Age Of Gas -- Natural Gas -- From A Reader -- October 2, 2019

The note below references these two graphics:

In the graphic above:

• the blue bar: the relative cost to build the plant
• the red bar: the relative cost to build the plant and operate it for 60 years

From a reader:

This may turn into a 2 email communication due to the expansive amount and nature of the data.

Starting with your posted graphic from the EIA showing extremely cheap electricity and then the Platt's tweet highlighting southeast Asia gas developments, I offer you a snapshot of some real world happenings:

1. Not one, but two power plant projects in Vietnam are currently underway. At 5,500 megawatt capacity, they will produce one-third the current, total consumption of New England.

2. General Electric's incredibly efficient, versatile HA series of new natural gas turbines. 

3. Using one of the Vietnames projects as an example, the 3,200 MW Thi Vai plant, one can trace/display this incredibly rapid unfolding of just what the heck is going on.
4. What will follow - succinctly, I hope - is a description of how the Vietnamese industry and population will shortly benefit from a confluence of events spanning from roughnecks in the Bakken, Marcellus, et al, pipelines to Louisiana, a yet-to-be-built LNG plant (Magnolia) which will assemble small, modular LNG trains which were manufactured in Avenza, Italy, shipped via state of the art LNG carriers which themselves are fueled by BOG (boil-off fas) and employing small re-liquefaction hardware to "save" all the product, delivered by ship-to-ship transfer to a stationary floating storage and regasification unit (FSRU) which may have been built in a modular process in South Korean yards using liquefaction trains from France or Finland.

5. Whew! What follows is currently being done in the Philippines, Thailand, Bangladesh, Brazil, Pakistan ... indeed, throughout the world on both a large and small scale. (Benin, New Caledonia and Jamaica being some of the small examples. Port Kembla, Australia, is showing the highly disruptive potential of what is to come).

Now continuing from the reader:

1. The Son My project is a CCGP (combined cycle gas plant) to be built by AES with a capacity of 2,200 megawatts. Just south, the massive (3,200 MW) Thi Vai project will use 3 GE 7HA natural gas turbines and will be built by Delta Offshore.

2. The fuel for these turbines will be regasified LNG from an FSRU docked right nearby. The LNG will come from the Magnolia plant in Louisiana.

3. The somewhat small Magnolia plant (8 million tonnes per annum capacity (mtpa) will assemble mid-scale sized trains of two mtpa each which themselves are manufactured by Baker Hughes General Electric in their Avenza, Italy, plant, or some competitor's equivalent.

4. BHGE has committed to manufacturing trains totaling 60 mtpa capacity. For context, world leading LNG exporter, Qatar, presently ships 77 mtpa.

5. Just yesterday, GE introduced its latest iteration of the H Frame, the 7HA.03, and "pre-sold" two to Florida Power and Light.

The reader made a few additional comments but I will stop here for now, except to add two of the reader's post-scripts:

P.S. Poor Greta.

P.P.S. All in all, I believe out world view on all things energy-related is on track to be vastly different a decade from now. 

5.) The advances in LNG handling are impacting all across the board.

One example being a 2 mtpa LNG plant being built up in the woods in Wyalusing, Pennsylvania.

At 2 million tonnes per year, this is only a bit smaller than the Elba Island plant in Savannah, Georgia.

All in all, Mr. Mr. Oksol, I believe our world view on all things energy related is on track to be vastly different a decade from now.