2020-10-27_PERMIT FILE - C1981035 (22)

Home Browse Search

domestic energy markets through 2050, and includes cases with different assumptions regarding macroeconomic growth, world oil prices, technological progress, and energy policies. In general,the last few years of baseline reference case data has shown strong domestic production coupled with relatively flat energy demand.The reference case estimates that natural gas consumption will grow the most on an absolute basis (0.8 percent annually), and non-hydroelectric renewables will grow the most on a percentage basis. Petroleum and coal annual growth is projected to be negative over the projection period, at -0.3 percent and -0.2 percent respectively.The outlook suggests that the U.S. could become a net energy exporter over the projection period in most cases. The report is produced using the National Energy Modeling System (NEMS), which is capable of capturing interactions of economic changes and energy supply, demand, and prices. However, the report comes with a couple of caveats that data users need to be mindful of. First,the projections are not predictions of what will happen, but rather forecasts of what may happen given certain assumptions and methodologies. Second, energy market projections and many of the events that shape free energy markets such as future developments in technologies, demographics, available resources, and resource constraints cannot be reasonably foreseen, and are therefore subject to much uncertainty. Domestic energy supplies of fossil fuel minerals can be generally classified as either Federal or other, where other signifies either state, local, private citizen, or corporate ownership. The BLM manages the onshore Federal mineral estate on behalf of the public and in accordance with numerous laws, regulations and policies,to provide for the nation's energy security and to enable free energy markets to function in order to meet domestic energy demands. BLM Colorado uses data from the Office of Natural Resources Revenue (ONRR), which provides production accounting services for all domestic fossil fuel minerals and allows the Bureau to understand the nations downstream carbon footprint(assuming combustion) based on the current domestic energy production/supply mix.The available ONRR data for fossil fuel production in the U.S. and Colorado (federal only) is shown in the table below.The coal production data from ONRR was supplemented with data available from the Colorado Division of Mine Reclamation and Safety (DRMS). According to EIA data, approximately 95 percent of oil stocks in the U.S. are used as a fuel source, while the remainder is typically used to produce petro-chemical products such as plastics and other consumables. The ultimate fate of these transformed petroleum stocks (5 percent) is unknown beyond the basic facts that some of it will be recycled, landfilled, and potentially combusted in waste-to-energy facilities. The latter component is an exceptionally small portion of energy production in the U.S. (0.4 percent, EIA 2015), and thus for the purposes of this report we assume a 95 percent combustion rate for oil production. Natural gas stocks are typically used as an energy source (via combustion) in the broader part of the economy. The industrial sector also uses natural gas as a raw material to produce chemicals, fertilizer, and hydrogen. The industrial sector accounts for about 35 percent of U.S. natural gas consumption, and natural gas was the source of about 31 percent of the U.S. industrial sector's total energy consumption (EIA 2017). The data suggests that 4 percent of natural gas stocks are diverted to non-combustion activities. However, most of the processes that support the chemical transformation of methane (natural gas) into these products generate a stoichiometric amount of CO2 emissions relative to the mass of the feedstocks used in the process. For the purposes of this report, we are simply assuming Dunn Ranch Area LBA and Mining Plan Modification 42 Technical Resources Report