www.enreport.com

As of 13 February 2012
Turkmenistan gas price to

• China is : 192 $ / 1000 m3 (5.48 $/mmbtu)
• Gazprom is: 240 $ / 1000 m3 (6.85 $/mmbtu

Prior to 2009. revenues from the sale of natural gas accounted for about 70% of the gross national product. In better times, in 2008. Turkmenistan Gazprom sold about 50 billion cubic meters. meters of natural gas valued at approximately $ 7 billion.
2010, volume of purchases fell to an annual 11 billion cubic meters
Gas exports to Iran is limited to 8 billion cubic meters.


izvestia.ru, as reported www.centrasia.ru.
http://www.oilru.com/news/303286/
http://top.rbc.ru/politics/01/02/2012/635866.shtml

Iran's production: 554 million m3 (mcm/day)
28 out of 31 regions in Iran is experiencing freezing colds.
Iran's daily demand hit a record 551 million m3/day (mcm/day).
Trend.az claims a new record of 556 mcm/day
Iran also exports 30 mcm/day to Turkey.
Iran Turkmenistan pipeline capacity is 50 mcm/day.
Turkmenistan has cut natural gas to Iran from 20 to 10 mcm/day.

References:
http://en.trend.az/regions/iran/1990080.html
http://www.panarmenian.net/rus/news/92297/

According to Lenta.ru

Turkmenistan has cut gas to Iran from 20 million m3 to 10 million m3. Even to 6 million m3

Iran-Turkmenistan pipeline capacity 50 million m3 (mcm)

Iran reduced gas to Turkey to 30 million m3(?)

%10 incomplete delivery to Europe

Gazprom" for the first time recognizes that fail to meet the peak load

With Nordstream Gazprom's export capacity hit 210 bcm(billion cubic meters), but article claims it can not export 180 bcm

Poland, Slovakia, Austria, Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, Greece and Italy. The most serious deficiency - in Austria (30%), Italy (24%) and Poland (8%)

Turkey is supplied more than 8 mcm/day than contracted(?),

Poland received 38 mcm/day instead of 40 mcm/day

Italy claims short supply of 10-20 mcm/day (95.7 mcm/day received instead of 108.3)

According to TEİAŞ, Turkish electricity system produced a record

• 35446.1 MWe (Momentarily) - 16th Jan
  
• 34971 MWe (hourly average) - 16 th Jan
  
• 0.71 TWh maximum daily consumption in 12th Jan 2012

The previous record and alltime high maximum peak production happened on
28th July 2011 - 36112.4 MWe at 14:30 local time

Sabah newspaper also claims, maximum daily consumption has occured as
- 180 million m3 /day
- 170 million m3/day

This is due to extreme cold affecting Anatolia and Tracia...

From oilru.com
A summary of Iranian gas usage from a Russian website:

"Today, about 53% rural and 95% of the urban population of Iran, a total of about 75% of the population throughout the country, provided with cooking gas""this year in Iran came early cold, which was not observed for the past 43 years"" the maximum daily gas consumption in the industry is fixed at around 92 million cubic meters/day. Last year the figure was 72 million cubic meters/day, reports Iran News."

Also, 2010 gas figures can be found:

On Feb. 2nd 2011 :

A trio of events - loss of supply, higher demand and maintenance outages - led to Wednesday's emergency rolling blackouts across Texas and spiking power prices as the grid operator for most of the state struggled to accommodate a brutal winter storm.

Here is my collection of events from various links...
In 2008, Texas has been on the edge of a rolling blackout.

"On February 26, 2008, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) called for an Emergency Electric Curtailment Plan (EECP) at 18:41 due to a worsening imbalance between generation and load which led to a decline in system frequency"

Read here (http://www1.eere.energy.gov/windandhydro/pdfs/43373.pdf)

In 2011, (Feb 2 & Feb 3) Texas has suffered from blackouts. The Oil Drum has a nice summary of the events : ( http://www.theoildrum.com/node/7449 )
A summary of events is available from this site : (http://www.oncor.com/news/newsrel/detail.aspx?prid=1297)

"Wednesday’s peak demand is currently projected to be more than 54,000 MW between 8-9 p.m. , and more than 58,000 – which would be a new winter record – between 7-8 a.m. on Thursday. The current winter peak demand record is 56,334 MW which occurred Feb. 2, between 7 and 8 p.m.
The grid continues to have about 2,700 MW of generation capacity unavailable because of unplanned or forced outages."

These 2700 MW of generating capacity are probably these two plants:

Texas Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst said the Luminant-owned 1,640 MW Oak Grove plant east of Temple and the 1,137 MW Sandow plant near Rockdale were among the plants knocked offline by the storm. Oak Grove suffered a broken pipe and Sandow was hampered by a frozen pipe. Allan Koenig, communications director for Luminant, said its Oak Grove and Sandow power plants "accounted for just a small percentage of the 50 units and 7,000 megawatts."

So it was cold weather, pipes and low pressure on natural gas lines:

Wednesday. Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst said this is something that “should not happen.” Dewhurst said he was told that water pipes at two plants, Oak Grove and Sand Hill, forced them to cut electricity production. Natural gas power plants that should have provided back up had difficulty starting due to low pressure in the supply lines, also caused by the cold weather.

I am not quite sure about this:

But, Fraser said, some power cuts affected some stations for compressing natural gas — so without power they couldn't pump gas, causing some gas power plants to go offline

The complaints followed :

"The blackouts left many people angry and frustrated. Cuellar said Oncor’s call center has been overwhelmed with about 60,000 calls an hour."

Also a family blamed these outages for causing their son's death

So the market worked and prices soared to 3000$/ MWh

As a result of the outages and demand, real-time power prices peaked around $3,000/MWh during some intervals Wednesday afternoon.

Average prices at this time of year normally would be less than $100/MWh, Doggett said.

Emergency measures started:

In addition to the default Energy Emergency Alert 0, or normal operations, there are four EEA levels: EEA Level 1, EEA Level 2A, EEA Level 2B and EEA Level 3, which is the most extreme.

ERCOT first contacted market participants at 4:45 am CST on Wednesday to warn the companies of inclement weather. ERCOT declared EEA Level 2A at 5:17 am

Less than a half-hour later, ERCOT declared EEA Level 3 at 5:43 am, at which point the grid operator asked distributors to shed firm load of 1,000 MW, said ERCOT spokeswoman Dottie Roark.

A timeline and detailed discussion is available from here:

More information about Texas home heating is available here

As a final reading, I offer "Normal Accident Theory" from NASA:

Failure in one part (material, human, or organization) may
coincide with the failure of an entirely different part. This
unforeseeable combination can cause cascading failures of
other parts.
In complex systems these possible combinations are practically
limitless.

As UK's gas demand heats a record high due to cold winter, gas suppy of 100 big customers has seen cut.Graph from The Oil Drum.

Guardian also writes:

The National Grid has told British Gas and other power firms to cut the supply to major corporate customers, in an attempt to preserve gas supply for households as the weather causes a surge in demand.

Links:
Is the United Kingdom facing a natural gas shortage?
Energy security questioned as National Grid cuts off gas to factories

I have never heard of Pulse Detonation Technology. But GE's working on it to increase the efficiency of gas turbines. Check the interview

New Scientist wrote about Clathrate Hydrates, when "carbon dioxide is pumped into the hydrate, it spontaneously takes the methane's place" and releases the methane locked inside it. The cage like structure formed by water molecules are key to these structures. US Energy Department is working with ConocoPhilips for a field trial.

"The deposits on the North Slope of Alaska are among the richest. A 2008 USGS study showed that there are 2.4 trillion cubic metres "

Worth a look!




Ref:


http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16848-ice-that-burns-could-be-a-green-fossil-fuel.html?DCMP=OTC-rss&nsref=online-news


http://www.conocophillips.com/NR/rdonlyres/700222AB-5BB1-4006-82D5-95E4CB5F254F/0/MethaneHydratesDataSheet.pdf


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clathrate_hydrate

Map can be reached from this website: