In the UN report on Y2K, the NERC paper made several "recommendation for action"

One was... to >"Monitor foreign Y2K readiness problems that may lead to interruptions in fuel supplies.">

How much, and what kind of fuel do we import for our utilities? Is it just oil, and is it a substantial amount?

If the answer is yes; we're in trouble from the maritime shipping sector. The report from shipping to the UN was very gloomy.

In a nutshell:

95% of the cargo that enters the US comes via the maritime environment. 50% of our oil comes in this way. 97% of all shipments are come via foreign vessels.

The paper goes on to paint a gloomy picture of the readiness of these foreign vessels and shipping ports (all highly dependent on embedded chips).

It says...

>There is a general acceptance throughout the industry that companies >need to focus on contingency planning, either because it is too late >to fix all of their technology, or to prepare for some level of >inevitable system failure.

-- Anonymous, December 27, 1998

Answers

Let's first look at energy consumption by electric utilities for 1996, and projected for 2000. Data are in quadrillion BTU.

Fuel consumption for electric generation (US): 1996 2000 Distillate Fuel 0.09 0.08 Residual Fuel 0.66 0.47 (Petroleum subtotal) 0.75 0.54 Natural Gas 3.04 4.14 Steam Coal 18.36 19.57 Nuclear Power 7.20 7.36 Renewable Energy 4.47 4.24 Electricity Imports 0.39 0.41 TOTAL 34.21 36.26

IMPORTS (total) 1996 2000 Crude Oil 16.30 19.18 Petroleum products 3.98 4.25 Natural gas 2.93 4.20 Other 0.57 0.62 TOTAL 23.78 28.26

(the US is a net exporter of coal)

US PRODUCTION OF FUELS 1996 2000 Crude oil/lease condensate 13.71 13.06 Natural gas plant liquids 2.46 2.39 Dry Natural gas 19.55 20.84 Coal 22.64 24.34 Nuclear Power 7.20 7.36 Renewable Energy 6.91 6.82 Other 1.33 0.56 TOTAL 73.80 75.37 My conclusion: our primary fuels are coal and nuclear; our production of nuclear is close to our consumption of it, and we're a net exporter of coal. We have a little electricity imported, probably from Canada. Our big energy import is petroleum (we import a little over half the petroleum consumed total), but we don't consume much petroleum in actual electricity generation. We produce a lot of natural gas; we import a little. We use a little in electricity generation. We use a lot for other purposes. My overall impression is that with some austerity measures we could be self-sufficient for fuel used in electricity generation. Assuming everything else (mining, transportation, etc.) would fall into place neatly, which isn't a given for Y2K.

Data are from Dept of Energy's "Annual Energy Outlook 1998 with Projections to 2020" (pub. 1997. DOE/EIA-0383(98))

-- Anonymous, December 28, 1998

Look for the foreign fuel problem to most drastically impact the east coast with a "double whammy". In addition to the highest rate of nuclear power usage in the US being on the east coast, the highest number of *oil-fired* generating plants is located along the east coast.

While some of these plants were originally coal-fired and thereby have the possibilty to be converted back to coal, some have been built exclusively as oil-fired facilities. How hurridly those plants that can be, will be converted to coal is one challenge. What if anything can be done with the oil fired plants if there are no tankers coming from the middle east is another Y2K headache we face.

Another disturbing fact abouth these oil-fired plants is the percentage which are co-located with nuclear facilities. If the design scheme was to have an oil-fired plant serve as standby power for the nuclear facility, then we have the need to insure that an interconnection is in place with other power facilities. If we have nuclear facilities shut-down for safety reasons and their supporting oil-fired facilities go dark because the tankers can't sail, there's no oil to load, the unloading facilities are inoperative, the refinery's dead or the pipeline to the plant is useless, then we have the possibility of shut-down nuclear facilities losing power for their systems. At worst, these would be residual cooling for a still- hot reactor. The middle ground is where monitoring, security and maintenance functions lose their power. At the big nuscience level we have a safely "cold" nuclear plant undergoing Y2K remediation losing power and all actions to get that plant back on-line being stopped.

WW

-- Anonymous, January 01, 1999

This may be a little off topic however, taking into consideration the analysis above about our major fuel consumption being nuclear and coal. I agree we are not as dependant on foreign sources for fuel as it may have appeared on the surface however, Koskinen just said that the railroads are in tremedously bad shape. THEY DISTRIBUTE THE COAL!

-- Anonymous, January 05, 1999