Special to The Hays Daily News

Sen. Janis Lee, D-Kensington, attended the second meeting of the newly appointed legislative Special Committee on Energy and Environmental Policy on Thursday and Friday.

Lee is one of 11 legislators who have been assigned to the committee, whose charge is to study energy and environmental policy in Kansas, examine regional and state petroleum refining capacity and its effect on availability of motor fuels in Kansas, gather information on the international and national natural gas supply and price forecasts, review electric transmission capacity in Kansas and make recommendations that will facilitate timely enhancement of transmission capacity.

Highlights of the meeting included:

A representative of the American Petroleum Institute presented an international overview of worldwide supply and demand. He indicated worldwide demand will increase from the current 86 million barrels per day to 115 mbd of petroleum by 2030, creating tighter markets and higher prices even with projected conservation measures. The world markets are moving to diesel, so that market will become increasingly tighter.

Oil production and refining continues to be a major player in Kansas, which has three producing petroleum refineries that process 300,000 barrels per day of oil. Kansans use about 64,000 bpd of gasoline and 35,000 bpd of diesel.

The CVR Energy Refinery at Coffeyville is the only North American plant to recycle petroleum coke -- instead of using higher priced natural gas -- in nitrogen fertilizer production. CVR is the only company producing crop nutrients from petroleum coke gasification in North America and is the lowest cost producer in the United States of urea ammonium nitrate, producing 576,888 short tons in 2007.

A presentation by the National Energy Technology Laboratory on Kansas energy issues indicated that existing natural gas combined cycle electric generation facilities cannot meet peak load growth demands and substitute for coal at the same time.

Kansas electricity demands will require the construction of new baseload generation facilities in the foreseeable future.

Additional presentations were heard outlining an overview of the state and regional oil and natural gas production and resources. Crude oil production in Kansas increased by 5.3 percent in 2007 and is projected to increase by 6.5 percent in 2008.