DrumBeat: January 7, 2007
Posted by threadbot on January 7, 2007 - 10:05am
Oil. The fast-vanishing drug the world can't yet live without
Say what you like about Dick Cheney, but you can't accuse him of not giving us fair warning. A year, almost to the day, before he was dubiously elected Vice-President of the United States - while still chairman of the energy giant Halliburton - he gave a riveting insight into the thinking that has since guided the administration's oil policy.In a speech to the Institute of Petroleum in November 1999 he shed light on our front-page revelation - that in the wake of the occupation of Iraq, Western companies are to be let loose on its vast, and previously state-owned, oil reserves. Perhaps even more importantly he flagged up an impending crisis that the world urgently needs to grasp - that supplies of oil may be about to shrink alarmingly.
The "basic, fundamental building block of the world economy" was, he warned, in danger of becoming extremely scarce.
Financial Sense Newshour's year-end review has a bunch of peak oil stuff. They are excerpts from previously aired shows, but a good overview for those who came in late. Included are clips from interviews with Stephen Leeb, Matthew Simmons and Jeremy Leggett.
An Almost Friendly Update on World Oil
Consider the following. [Eni S.p.A. economist Leonardo] Maugeri states that the average global recovery rate for oil 30 years ago was 20%, when actually it was 32%, as compared to 35% at the present time. The purpose of this spurious comparison is to convince readers that improvements in recovery technology are accelerating, when the opposite is probably true. He is also attracted to the “dim but intriguing prospect” that oil might be a “renewable resource”.
From the Sunday Times: Revealed: Israel plans nuclear strike on Iran
Two Israeli air force squadrons are training to blow up an Iranian facility using low-yield nuclear “bunker-busters”, according to several Israeli military sources.The attack would be the first with nuclear weapons since 1945, when the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The Israeli weapons would each have a force equivalent to one-fifteenth of the Hiroshima bomb.
Belarus, Russia entrenched in a bitter energy row
Belarus, feuding over energy with chief ally Russia, on Saturday subpoenaed the head of Moscow's oil pipeline monopoly Transneft to appear in court over administrative charges of illegal oil transits to third states.
Russian oil deliveries to Kazakhstan may be checked to counter re-export
The Russian government may order checks into the volumes of oil delivered to Kazakhstan in an effort to combat so-called re-export, a source in a relevant government agency told Interfax.
Blood and oil: How the West will profit from Iraq's most precious commodity
The 'IoS' today reveals a draft for a new law that would give Western oil companies a massive share in the third largest reserves in the world. To the victors, the oil? That is how some experts view this unprecedented arrangement with a major Middle East oil producer that guarantees investors huge profits for the next 30 years
War and Cheap Oil: A Second Look
For years, many conservationists argued that the government was subsidizing gasoline by spending billions of tax dollars to keep ships in the Persian Gulf and troops on the ground to assure the flow of oil.But some oil experts say the picture may be more complicated now that war is raging in the Middle East: these days, they say, the military commitment doesn’t just hide the real price of oil, but also has become a factor in pushing the price up.
Private power plant needed to prevent an energy crisis
The Irish government has told the energy regulator that he should get a private operator to build a new electricity power plant to prevent blackouts that would cripple Irish industry.
Report: U.K. Army Guarding Energy Plants
LONDON - Britain's army will be deployed at oil, gas and electricity facilities in the country to defend them from potential terrorist attacks, a newspaper reported on Sunday.
General Motors Corp. has unveiled a radical shift in its powertrain technology with an engine that can run exclusively on battery power.After seeing Japanese rivals such as Toyota steal a march in hybrid autos, GM aims to pioneer its new "E-Flex" system as the next step for alternative engines beyond the era of gasoline (petrol).
Car Boom Puts Europe on Road to a Smoggy Future
No trains run to the new suburbs where hundreds of thousands of Dubliners now live, and the few buses going there overflow with people. So nearly everyone drives — to work, to shop, to take their children to school — in what seems like a constant smoggy, traffic jam. Since 1990, emissions from transportation in Ireland have risen about 140 percent, the most in Europe. But Ireland is not alone.
Tibet's record temperatures spark climate change fears
BEIJING - Temperatures in rugged Tibet have hit record highs in recent days, China's state press has reported, as a scientific survey warned of the impact of global warming in the Himalayan region.
Tropical diseases back as Europe warms up
SCIENTISTS have uncovered the first evidence that diseases such as malaria, long thought beaten in Europe, are making a comeback because of climate change.
Predicting global health trends: why peak oil matters
Let us explain how peak oil and associated ecological crises are of the utmost importance to the future of global health.
Oil and gas: What’s the story for 2007?
A resurgence of the doom-and-gloom oil shortage scenarios from the 1970s has made its way in the popular literature again. It’s currently fashionable to talk of "peak oil" (or even more recently, "peak gas"). Yet how much longer will such talk last? Probably until the oil price makes another plunge or else fails to make a new high within five or six months.
GE Oil & Gas to supply equipment for Saudi Aramco oilfield expansion project
Saudi Aramco has selected GE Oil & Gas business for supplying gas turbines to the Southern Area seawater capacity expansion project in Ghawar - the world’s largest oil field - and the Khurais oil field.
Oil facilities are getting refined: ConocoPhillips, Chevron hoping to boost production
The projects will be a boon -- but not a panacea -- to California drivers. They will add to the state's gasoline supplies, but not enough to match California's growing demand.
10% oil price fall is a bad omen for 2007
The unexpected 10 per cent fall in global oil prices since the start of the New Year casts a shadow over the outlook for 2007 with the crucial technical support of the 200-day moving average price broken. For the Middle East oil producers this is the equivalent of a sudden pay cut, although savings from the boom years are huge.
Asian naphtha to be firmer this year
"The East looks to be ending a long period of extensive surpluses as Middle East volumes continue to lack any overall increase and certain places in Asia begin to increase their deficits for the first time in a couple of years," said Jim Weinrauch, analyst at Naphtha Information Services based in Singapore.
Minnesota is barren of fossil fuels, with no crude oil, natural gas or coal reserves. Yet its renewable energy potential is gigantic, if so far mostly unused, awaiting the right conditions for that power to be tapped.In 2007, that moment has finally arrived.
Connecticut State Needs A Long-Range Energy Plan
Considering that the world has a finite quantity of oil and natural gas remaining, the state should develop a master plan accounting for inevitable depletion of fuel supplies leading to what James Howard Kunstler refers to in the title of his book, “The Long Emergency.” There are various projections for peak production of both fuels; nonetheless, all experts approximate significant depletion within the next 30 years. Building more power plants is simply the wrong solution. Federally mandated “congestion charges” may be reduced in the short term but in the long term, the cost of fuel supplies will rise, wiping out the savings.
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many of the arguments about peak oil go: we are out of oil, thats wrong: we have all these alternave sources of energe, thats also wring : they are expensive and don't scale well.
considering this would it be possible at some stage to have an artical about how the cost of oil could change as the mix of oil that the world has shifts from light sweet to the heavy sour of many of the new fields to come online (manafa is an example of this), through to alternatives, which have quite a high price, as the net energy for them minimal.
in talking to many people around me i have come to the conclusion that noone realy cares about PO atm. (some people know of it as a posibility, but they don't consider it an important one).
2c
Andrew
http://www.forbes.com/business/2007/01/03/general-motors-electric-car-bi...
There's a cute little slide show, too.
At a recent dinner for journalists in Detroit, GM Vice Chairman Robert A. Lutz, known for his love of gas-guzzling sports cars and fighter jets said, surprisingly: "The electrification of the automobile is not just a possibility. It is inevitable."
This is exactly the point I argued with Vinod Khosla. He wants to stick with biofuels, because we already have infrastructure for that. But if you understand the situation with biofuels, you can see that in the end electrification has a much greater chance of providing a substantial fraction of our current transport needs. Biofuels don't actually have a remote chance, unless you are willing to play unrealistic "what if" scenarios (what if we engineer a bacteria that eats unprocessed cellulose and excretes pure biodiesel). Well, yeah, we could do that. Or we just engineer wings and lightweight bones on all of us, and just fly around like birds.
I'm struck by the fact that everyone sees a future in which we use less oil as 'inevitable' and, most importantly, extremely desireable, yet there is so much resistance to any policy/product/idea that gets us to this allegedly inevitable future that one has to seriously question how our society makes long-term decisions.
Lutz and his ilk have been leading the fight against this future for a long time. Did the logic of why oil use must change only get to him now? Did he see it before? The future is an obvious combination of electrification, conservation, renewables, and nuclear power...why the resistance to change? I'm a political scientist and fully understand the power of vested interests, but at a certain point even the most powerful vested interest eventually bow to the weight of the majority or reality. Is there something I'm just not getting? It's as if Americans have a cultural aversion to the long-term, societal public-good thinking that underlies energy/environmental policy.
Ten years ago GM was telling a story: we'd drive gasoline cars (and SUVs!) now, and when oil or global warming became a problem, hydrogen cars would be ready to replace them. This might have been a cynical marketing move ( tobacco companies & cancer, Exxon & global warming, GM & fossil fuels ), but it is also possible that they bought into it themselves, over time.
They may have come to believe their own BS that oil would stay cheap, and then (cheap?) hydrogen would be there to replace it.
I snagged this quote in July of 2005:
The source is now gone but my old blog entry is here: http://odograph.com/?p=267
Anyway, I think GM got caught flat-footed, either because they thought they had more time to run the SUV -> hydrogen game, or because they'd fallen for their own marketing. At that point they were stuck with a lot of product and a long design cycle (it takes years to get a totally new car on the road). So they had to talk a story that supported their current inventory. They had (desperately) to keep people buying, while (secretly?) in the back room scrambling to come up with the new generation.
But again the interesting thing is that they can't be too "forward" in their statements. They've got a lot of Tahoes down there on the lot, right now.
odograph,
Great post, and points to at least two very important issues:
The first is the way GM execs can pull the idiotic EIA projections out of the hat for cover. I complained of this in other posts, in that these projections will be used by bankers, venture capitalists, and large corporations to justify their argument that there is no need for change, at least not yet.
The other point you make "They've got a lot of Tahoes down there on the lot, right now." Exactly, and they still have a huge investment in tooling and assembly plants to somehow try to modify or expense down as no longer useful. It is a huge logistical undertaking for a company already bleeding badly financially. One way forward may be to use one of it's more "offbeat" nameplates, like Saab, to make the switch to really advanced vehicles, the type that would lure the "first adaptors" of new tech as much for novelty sake as anything else (the Toyota Prius has done well among that type of buyer), and then move from division to division. After all, work trucks will still be needed, and going to an advanced drivetrain, such as hydraulic hybrid with either propane or Diesel engines could buy them a window of time costing down the chasis assembly lines of the current chassis, as they plan for a more radical product.
Anyway they do it, it won't be easy, and if we do get a sudden flood of cheap oil from new production, they will be caught flat footed, with an advanced product and no one greatly interested in it (they recall well the EV-1, praised but never profitable).
Roger Conner known to you as ThatsItImout
Notice that the Volt has a gas fired generator on board. One of the "problems" with the electric vehicle like the EV1 is that it required very little maintenance, a very unattractive option for an auto company. As long as we can perpetuate some sort of ICE along with the battery, we can ensure the need for continue and long term maintenance like oil changes, etc.
I will believe that people like Lutz "get it" when they announce that the overwhelming dependency on the automobile for transportation is a model that it is inappropriate for the survival of the planet as we know it and continues to be a serious hindrance to livable cities and a high level quality of life.
I note with sadness that another article above points out that places like Ireland have decided to follow in our footsteps. No one ever learns until it is too late.
I'm glad other people realize the 'necessity' of continual maintenance in GM/Fords business play :P
Yes I wholeheartedly agree with that. The usage of cars as a primary mode of transportation is the root of all evil - and depletion of resources is just one of, not even the most acute one IMO.
Notice that the Irish article ends with a notice from Praga's tram system. When I was back to my home city - Sofia, I was saddened to see it becoming much more like Dublin than the way it used to be - a compact, walkable and mass transit oriented city like Praga. Now it is increasingly becoming the typical polluted and gridlocked nightmare we are talking here.
IMO urban sprawl and the related problems are all a result of an unadequate public policy. During the socialism we managed to build compact and well served cities, where the car was a complementary instead of mandatory mode of transportation because of the ability of the govts to plan the cities around mass transit. Now in US and increasingly in EU the government "follows" urban development - e.g. building roads "on demand". This acts as nothing but putting temporary quick fixes to the problem, which last no longer than the next election. Government's retreat from city planning is resulting in the fast depletion of the "commons" by the private sector - in this case the commons being mass transit, affordable downtowns, walkable neighbourhoods etc. The results are obvious and will show up to be devastating in the near future, IMO.
I wish I fully understood how true that statement is before investing in degrees in architecture and urban design. The problems are generally understood within academia, but the lack of public policy and government leadership means that these planning oriented professions are effectively owned by the developers. This makes it extremely difficult to actually practice without being part of the problem. No meaningful movement is likely to originate from this profession despite the heroic efforts of some. Those that understand the issues simply are not empowered.
Long-range planing and capitalism (as we are now practicing it) don't seem to coexist well and few professions drive this home like land use planing and urban design. I changed professions early on to avoid being part of the problem and still live a satisfying life. As public officials have withdrawn from reconciling community interests with development, and have instead taken on roles as advocates for developers, I have come to see a growing tension between present day capitalism and the common good. We all play a small role in how public policy issues are prioritized and how long term thinking figures into it, but I have no clue what to do about it in the current climate (no pun intended).
Yes it is puzzling. Switz. is very green and ecologically minded, has a hands on democracy, and the vested interests are not oil lobbies or car/machine manufacturers or the military-industrial complex, so called. .. Corps, all the same, eg. Bank-insurance and Big Pharma. And CH produces a LOT of arms.
And yet the picture is very similar.
It seems to be the case that ‘oil’ (fossil fuels) is so tightly wound into our ‘modern’ economies that the very thought reducing their use is frightening; for the present economic scheme - capitalistic growth- to continue, oil must keep on pouring in and giving forth its miraculous free lunch. Without it, or realistically, with mild or sharp reductions in availability, so much changes that no-one can really contemplate it.
This attitude is shared by pols (who want to be elected or remain in place), the ‘economic milieu’ (who wants to keep earning pots of money with their businesses), and ‘the people’, mostly employees, who want their children to succeed, want to drive a car (even a second, why not?), want to indulge in expensive leisure (planes, ski holidays, trips to the mall) and generally consider that living standards, including medical care for. ex. have to rise. Disabled people, special ed kids, and pensioners live off the investments made by their ‘funds’, which have to perform, return at least so much %.
Not new, I know. Says little about the future. The point is that much of the tortuous discussion and real life attempts re. green energy and renewables are attempts to maintain the status quo, if only psychologically...those in the know (vested interests, savvy Gvmt. types, the military, etc) understand that much of the ‘diversification’ of energy proposed is not reasonable, cannot really function (EROEI, long term considerations, etc.) so their response is luke warm or muted or even scornful.
It is not puzzling at all. Oil is simply the cheapest way of moving a machine the size of a car. Even in Switzerland. Even if you are a free thinker. Even if you believe that global warming is the worst problem humanity has ever had to deal with. The fact that using oil at current market prices is the cheapest of fuels useful to power an engine the size of a car is a fact.
It won't stay that way. And that is when change will happen. Not when people come to their minds and not when politicians decide to making changes in the law. Not even when Toyota offers a plug-in hybrid. It will be the day when oil will stop to be cheaper than something else.
As for renewables... they are on the move. Solar and wind have become mainstream industries. You can count the number of years until they become the darlings of every politian on the block (local, state or federal) on two hands because both solar and wind are labor intensive. They both will create jobs far beyond any other energy industry. And that is when people will start to care. Do something against the solar and wind industry in the near future and you will reap political hate and voter's revenge.
It has nothing to do with the oil. It has everything to do with individuals demanding cars - this is universal phenomenon everywhere around the world. Cars are a typical "tragedy of the commons" thing. Individuals think that their car will contribute nothing to the problems we discuss here, but with time the cummulative effect of so many cars inevitably excaberates the problems.
In this regard we behave like spoiled kids, who demand that we are given the toys we want or to be left out lingering in the night clubs but are moaning when we have to face the concequences - for example poor education or ruined health. My solution would be not to listen to the kids and follow a longer term program. Make them toil for their toys (e.g. expensive mobility) or simply not giving it to them at all.
But of course this is utopical suggestion in our current arrangement - the whole idea of democracy, the way we have it now revolves around giving the kids what they want.
People have always wanted and possessed personal transportation, and producing and fueling it always used to be a major industry.
This is not a new phenomenon.
For most of human civilization, it was known as a "horse".
Very few people could afford to have a horse in preindustrial society. Indeed, in countries such as England it was ILLEGAL for commoners even to ride horses, much less to own them. Horses were reserved for the "equestrian class," a tiny aristocracy of less than five percent of the population.
In the U.S., horses, mules and other draft animals were so scarce (prior to about 1840) that for hundreds of years men would hitch up their wives to pull the plow; only the rich slave-owners like Washington and Jefferson could afford to ride horses.
At the height of prosperity of ancient Rome, a few aristocrats had chariots or slave-born chairs for personal transport. Most people put a lot of miles on their sandals.
"Very few people could afford to have a horse in preindustrial society. Indeed, in countries such as England it was ILLEGAL for commoners even to ride horses, much less to own them. Horses were reserved for the "equestrian class," a tiny aristocracy of less than five percent of the population.
In the U.S., horses, mules and other draft animals were so scarce (prior to about 1840) that for hundreds of years men would hitch up their wives to pull the plow; only the rich slave-owners like Washington and Jefferson could afford to ride horses.
At the height of prosperity of ancient Rome, a few aristocrats had chariots or slave-born chairs for personal transport. Most people put a lot of miles on their sandals."
That was not true in land rich and frontier areas like America. Horses were so common that Virginia passed a law allowing people to geld any horse running loose that was less than some specified height. Horses were what you used to keep down the trees while you waited for the roots in your 'cleared' acreage to decay enough for you to plow. That was because trees were so common that you just girdled the trees so that they would die and dry out, then burned them to clear them as cheaply as possible.
Tree land (where you pastured pigs on mast) was nearly free, pasture land little more expensive. Fenced or walled farmland was what cost money. The fences and walls were to keep the damned horses, cows, pigs, and sheep out of your crops.
Horses in 'settled' countries like Europe, India, and China, really were prestige objects that cost a lot to own and operate compared to cattle, especially larger horses that had to be grain fed instead of hay fed like ponies. Oxen were common draft animals for that reason.
In that good old horse-loving land of Virginia, what percentage of the black people owned horses? And what percentage of the population were black? Although the shortage of livestock was not as bad in the original colonies, such as Virginia, only rich folk rode, well into the nineteenth century. In 1850 in Missouri, only half the farms were wealthy enough to have even one mule.
Just because the white planter/aristocracy was worried about the excess of scrub horses, that tells you nothing of how the ordinary folk got around.
Virginia is a very strange case - in the counties where plantation style cultivation was practical (for simplicity, call it the Tidewater), the slave population in 1800 ranged from as high as 69.8 to a majority ( http://www.virginiaplaces.org/population/pop1800numbers.html ). However, in the Shenandoah/Piedmont (also West Virginia in 1800), the percentage was often under 10% - covering possibly a quarter of the white population. (You can also see why splitting off West Virginia in the Civil War was practical, beyond the geography - the people there weren't generally slaveholders and weren't economically reliant on slavery.)
However, in terms of how rare horses were - Virginia has the only 'wild' horse population in the Eastern United States, which tends to argue for the fact that horses weren't all that uncommon, otherwise they would have been captured and sold off, likely in numbers which would have destroyed the population.
There is a major difference between 'urban' colonial America, like New England and Tidewater Virginia, and the 'western' America which grew after the Revolutionary War - that 'western' area (Charlottesville, for example) did not suffer for any lack of horses or mules, in part because like cows, such animals can live in fairly hilly/steep terrain which is not that useful for other activities, except logging, where horses/mules are an asset. However, in the areas which had been colonized for a century or more at that point, horses were an expensive burden, as the farm land was no longer as fertile, and logging was a dead industry.
Of course. In Spain a 'Caballero' or horseman was a term equivalent to 'gentleman' or 'person of means' in a society where the common 'hombre' walked and, if he was lucky, had a small burro to carry the burdens.
Sancho Panza rode a burro . . . but was it owned by his master, Don Quixote?
Both the ownership of horses and that of swords was restricted to aristocracy in Europe; they did not want peasants, even rich ones, getting any uppity ideas.
The counterpart to Caballero was Peon.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peon
"In its obsolete usage in Spain itself, the word denoted a person who travelled by foot rather than on a horse (caballero)."
This word obviously carries derogatory connotations in English.
Limited access to 'horsepower' is probably why efficient hand digging and cultivating tools were once so common. In Spanish they are called an azada, in India a powrah, in english speaking areas they are simply called a digging hoe or a planter's eye hoe. You can still get them at the site http://www.easydigging.com/
Greg in MO
It was never illegal for anyone to ride a horse in England. Stealing one is another matter.
True. Now, if only we had one billion horse carts back then, and we had to feed those horses with a straw only coming from a large granary in the Middle East, and if those horses changed the climate during the centuries, then now we would have had the experience and would have known what to do about it. Phew what a long sentence...
Re: Well, yeah, we could do that. Or we just engineer wings and lightweight bones on all of us, and just fly around like birds
Nice.
Oh, for everyone -- I highly recommend An Almost Friendly Update on World Oil that Leanan found. Thanks for that. Banks is an energy economist and not an optimist. Try A Few Uninvited Comments on the Work of Some Prominent Oil Optimists. His remarks when speaking of Maugeri, Lynch, et. al. are hilarious.
Birds that fly in flocks have genetic collision avoidance systems, humans do not.
I see flying humans in rush hour flyways as a massive disaster waiting to happen.
Useful for rural travel no doubt, but electrified Urban Rail is a better solution that can be implemented quicker than raising a next generation of flying children (think teenagers with wings and ground bound parents !#).
Best Hopes for electrified Urban Rail :-P
Alan
#"Grounding" as punishment would take on a completely new meaning ;-)
Doomer!
No, no! Alan is just a "Realist"! :)
Oh, and now I will tease RR: r u a "Wing-ed Cornucopian?" ;)
(OK, I'll stop with the rather idiosyncratic levity now.)
When I was young, all the smart money was on personal helicopters or autogyros as the future of transportation. Serious "futurists" thought cars would be obsolescent by the year 2000.
Ah, how the future changes . . . .
I had an idea a couple of years ago. What makes personal flight difficult? It takes a lot of energy to provide lift. So, I got this crazy idea about personal blimps, as the lift would be provided by light gases. I did a bit research, and I was quite surprised to see that someone has done it, and patented it:
http://www.personalblimp.com/
It is a lot bigger than I had envisioned.
Or your personal flying saucer: another perpetual motion machine
Yikes! My company would need a much bigger parking lot for those blimps!
Alan,
Your hopes (and mine) for electrified urban rail may have got a boost on Friday when Caltrain, our local commuter rail operator, announced that they are seeking federal permission to run lightweight EMU's (electric multiple units) on their line between San Francisco and San Jose (Caltrain planning for rail revolution). These lightweight cars are more energy efficient and accelerate/decelerate faster than standard US commuter vehicles. Caltrain hopes to address the Federal Railway Administration (FRA) objections to mixing lightweight trains and freight trains (although freight is light on the caltrain line) by improving their train-detection and other safety systems.
I noted the discussion on another board I frequent, but have not had time to read carefully.
There are several operational advantages in getting away from the FRA 800,000 lb crush standard (from memory). It adds weight to commuter rail cars, which increases costs to buy & operate (and even wears out rail faster, 40 year renewal could be expanded to 60 or 70 years :-).
Modern controls can mix two-way traffic on both tracks of a double track freight RR. IMHO, they cna be relied upon to keep commuter trains from crushing into freight trains (or each other).
FRA has a reputation as a "stick in the mud" and it is ALWAYS easier for a bureaucrat to say "No" unfortunately.
Today, temporal seperation is allowed between Light Rail (that does not meet FRA 400 ton standard) and freight to operate on the same tracks. The last freight train has to be off the tracks at least 2 hours before the first Light Rail train and vica versa. This was a major step forward for dual use.
Best Hopes for Rational Bureaucrats,
Alan
I live a hundred yards from the Caltrain tracks. I only see freight trains on a regular basis late at night well after the commuter trains have stopped running. Normally I think they run one freight train a day. It would be very easy to ensure that freight is always separated from commuter trains.
This line runs up the peninsula to San Francisco and terminates so there would never be any through traffic going beyond San Francisco.
When I lived in Japan I rode their electric trains daily. They really are quick to start and stop. In fact I'd guess that the train reached top speed before the last train left the station. They also entered the station at nearly full speed ( about 60 MPH ).
I do hope they continue the idea of having express trains connecting to local trains. One of the worst experiences in Japan was riding a certain local lines that had no express trains. I think the line from Kawasaki to Tachikawa had something like 25 stops during a roughly fifty minute ride. The train stops, the doors open, the bells ring, the doors close, the train runs for a minute or so then the process repeats. It was maddening.
In Japan they would run freight on the same tracks as commuter lines. Mostly they ran at night. On occasion you'd see them in the daytime.
The 1,000 mile Pacific Electric network in the Los Angeles basin would use a streetcar full of pax to pull a boxcar or two full of oranges or other produce in mixed pax & freight operation (I was told). They would also run short, light freight trains on the tracks on occasion (with some seperation).
Lots of things can be done, have been done, but are not allowed today (in the US).
Best Hopes for better regs,
Alan
Yes, here's a great quote:
"I’ve heard the opposite of Lynch’s claim, but it hardly makes any difference. What we see when we observe these curves is that they go up on the left, and they go down on the right, and regardless of what happens in between, that is enough to claim that something very unpleasant could eventually take place with the global supply of oil"
Great article.
Dave Cohen wrote:
Just checked out the online discussion group mentioned in that article.
It's called "Energy Pulse" and can be found at:
http://www.energypulse.net/
Very high quality. It's moderated. In fact, it seems you have to be somebody to participate. But quality is very high.
James
James,
This site is quite good, but the quality of the articles is mixed. It is aimed at the energy market, mostly conventional utilities. It has two other sites - one is a daily news one and once a week the editor writes a column.
>But if you understand the situation with biofuels, you can see that in the end electrification has a much greater chance of providing a substantial fraction of our current transport needs.
Just wait a few more years when the first generation hybrids need battery replacements and the unsuspecting owners find out that they need to fork over thousands of dollars for replacements and disposal costs for the depleted batteries.
Since Lithium is somewhat a rare resource, I suspect that if production of hybrids does manage to ramp up, that shortages will drive up battery prices making hybrids unaffordable.
Finally as natural gas and oil shortages kick in, all that over night space capacity of electric generation will disappear over night as business and consumers switch over to electricity for thier energy needs. For instance, If a factory needs large amounts of electricity, they will shift operations from the day to night (and weekends) inorder to reduce costs. I suspect that this is already discussed in board rooms today, because electricity prices have risen so much recently. Consumers will install heat pumps, space heaters, etc when they can no longer reliably get natural gas and heating oil.
In the begining of the run up of oil prices a few years ago, the spreads between heavy crude and light crude were huge, but with in a very short period of time, demand for heavy oil began to soar as everyone jumped on the bandwagon. The demand for off hours electricity will be no different. In the end it will but a huge strain on a already fragil electrical grid because electricity producers use off-hours for repair and maintanance. When demand for electricity remains near capacity 7/24 it will be much harder to keep the system stable.
In my opinion, investing in Public transportation systems is the way to go. Hybrid are just a lost cause and should never be considered as a option. This is one of the reasons why we are head for a collapse. Too many people want to keep the status quo, and are too short sighted to see the true crisis ahead.
In my opinion, investing in Public transportation systems is the way to go. Hybrid are just a lost cause and should never be considered as a option.
If I was to implement a public policy I would try to do both. I would gradually tax up gasoline and cars and move them to the luxury category, where they belong. The revenue goes to building mass transit!!! The only alternative to the suburban nightmare we are putting ourselves into.
Energy conservation is the easy answer and government mandates/taxes could accomplish this very effectively. I think cheap electric cars would be an effective first step. I feel the government should be artificially raising the cost of wasting energy to unbearable levels.
I think our only hope is to hand control of the world over to a team of Dilberts.
If lithium gets too expensive they'll have to figure out how to use sodium. It will weigh more but probably not prohibitively so for a battery pack of that future time when it happens. After all, the containment system and oxidizer seem to be the major weight factors for large batteries.
IMO you're likely to see some kind of electric car, like it or not, because public transportation really only works for trips within places having stacks and stacks of wall-to-wall people. The majority of Americans loathe such places - for example, they go to the country on vacation, not, as Europeans sometimes do, to the city. (And electronic media have greatly lessened the need for them to physically visit performing arts centers, stadiums, and other such urban facilities.) Indeed, today's articles suggest that the majority even of Europeans may not actually want to live in crowds either, even if history and rampant confiscatory taxation have thus far fated them to do so. (And what little I've seen of European suburbanization seems to align with this.) I don't see how anyone gets around this sort of thing anytime soon, unless one herds countless millions at gunpoint along some new Trail of Tears into some unimaginable new kind of artificially densified concentration camps.
Currently in the U.S. there is enormous unmet demand for walkable and mixed use neighborhoods. Approximately one-third of the market is looking for neighborhoods that fit that description, but more than 90% of new dwellings are in the conventional suburban format. The demand is projected to increase significantly due to existing cultural and demographic trends. For details and references to market surveys, see The Market for Mixed Use & Walkability
The density required for viable transit is not so high as you imagine. Transit engineers like to see at least 7-8 dwellings per acre, which can be provided by a mix of single family homes and townhouses. The absolute minimum for transit is 2-3 dwellings per acre. One-quarter of the U.S. population lives at that density or higher.
That's because at present people are an economic liability for local communities. We have federalised the cost of old people over 65 and localised the cost of young people under 15 and local governments have understandably done all they can to keep housing as expensive as possible.
Housing density high enough that you can get along without more than one car is especially suicide for local governments. That's what is needed by stay at home moms for families with kids.
Think of it this way. It's 10K per kid between 5 and 18, on average. How much real estate tax do you think that family pays?
What you're describing is a good argument for mixed use. Permit a better balance of residential and commercial uses, and the tax revenue from commercial uses can help offset the governmental costs of residential. More compact development patterns also save governments money; see Sprawl Costs: Economic Impacts of Unchecked Development.
Oil is not used in any large amount in the grid---gas is, of course.
Off hours have some significant capacity with coal and nuclear.
In the end, all logical deductions, quantitative computations, and recognition of current technological abilities, point to one thing: we need more nuclear plants.
There will be a strain in off-hours power production, but it is not fundamentally limited by geophysics. Remember that the amount of money to order 1 going to oil companies will go to electricity, and there will be enough desire to increase capacity.
"In my opinion, investing in Public transportation systems is the way to go"
This just doesn't work for a large number of people. The investments in homes and physical locations of businesses is much larger than in vehicles. Plug-in hybrids will come first.
The danger is that they will be coal-fueled instead of nuclear and wind fueled.
Robert,
You're right that biofuels are no substitute for conservation and automobile electrification, most likely plug-in hybrids for the forseeable future. However, how will we power large vehicles and construction machinery, etc. without a carbon-neutral diesel substitute? Biofuels in one form or another make sense as part of a long-term energy portfolio.
We in the U.S. need to reduce our carbon emissions by at least 80%. Do you honestly think that automobile electrification can do that in the transportation sector? Not a chance. What's going to fuel automobile manufacturing? What's going to provide the electricity?
However, how will we power large vehicles and construction machinery, etc. without a carbon-neutral diesel substitute? Biofuels in one form or another make sense as part of a long-term energy portfolio.
Yes, there will always be a need for some biofuels. And "some" biofuels is not an issue. Replacing gasoline with biofuels is the issue. It can't be done.
We in the U.S. need to reduce our carbon emissions by at least 80%. Do you honestly think that automobile electrification can do that in the transportation sector? Not a chance. What's going to fuel automobile manufacturing? What's going to provide the electricity?
The thing about electricity is that it can come from a lot of different sources. We can start to electrify now, and start supplementing our coal-generated electricity with more solar, wind, and electricity from biomass gasification. Ultimately I can see solar panels on a large fraction of houses as the source for electricity for personal transport.
I am not convinced by your assertion, even less by the "fly around like birds" statement. In truth, electrification of transport and biofuels are not at odds with each other. The small electrical generator that recharges the batteries of "The Volt" electric car can be powered by biofuels. Ethanol, but perhaps more likely methanol.
There is no physical law that states that the energy stored in carbohydrates can never be converted into liquid fuel without requiring a massive fossil fuel input. Most likely, gasification and catalysts will be able to do the job, even if nothing else works.
There is no biological law that I know about that requires that soil must be depleted by using it to grow energy crops. In fact, there are strategies which would likely reduce soil erosion.
I agree with you that ethanol from corn gives us essentially no energy return, and does not mitigate greenhouse gas production, and does cause lots of environmental and soil damage. I agree with you that biofuels can never supply the amount of energy which we think we need today. I agree with you that conservation efforts are probably more important than a crash program to develop biofuels. But, I don't see why, in principle, it would be a bad idea to use biofuels to produce some liquid fuels.
Actually, I do see a problem. My main fear is that if it ever became very profitable to convert vegetation to liquid fuels, then everyone would be cutting down trees for this purpose, and we could lose our forests and our soil. I don't think the use of biofuels is inconsistent with physics, chemistry or biology, but maybe it is incompatible with capitalism.
It is for this reason that I place greater hopes in solar PV and wind, and the possibility that ways will be found both to store the electric energy and convert some of it to liquids.
Tony Verbalis
There is no physical law that states that the energy stored in carbohydrates can never be converted into liquid fuel without requiring a massive fossil fuel input. Most likely, gasification and catalysts will be able to do the job, even if nothing else works.
Again, the issue is one of scale. Biofuels can and will make a contribution, as they are now. People who think we will continue motoring along in our SUVs as biofuels replace gasoline are delusional. That's the point.
Right, it is all a matter of scale. Bjorn Lomborg says we have nothing to worry about because we have so much oil locked up in shale.
Now all we have to do is figure out how to get out of that shale. Lomobrg did not understand that very fine point.
Ron Patterson
MK Hubbert estimated in 1949 that global URR could include 188-Gb of Alberta tar sands and 625-Gb of shales. "did he not understand that very fine point" either??
In the ten years since Lomberg discussed price-inspired additions to URR, we have seen an approx doubling of available reserves/resource by CERA, EIA, ExxonMobil, IEA, IHS & Total. He estimated it would take 25 years. We are on target to do it in ten (despite ten years of consumption)...
Whoops, the batteries for this little thing aren't quite ready yet; supposedly, they'll appear (as if by magic, I suppose) by 2010. Can't wait.
Don't worry, you can buy a nice Tahoe to drive until then.
Filed under "unexpected consequences":
'Irreversible' global warming claims its first victims of the New Year
Next year it'll be the CJ Biodiesel company near Shrewsbury.
For those that live near DC
Hello TODers,
Enjoyed the topmost link in Leanan's Drumbeat for its reporting realism. In the 3+ years since I first discovered Jay Hanson's Dieoff.com and became a Peaknik: I have noticed a gradual shift in the MSM to start revealing more of the true story to the public. Hopefully, the momentum for PO + GW Outreach will start to blossom.
Now, if I could just convince GOOGLE to put that 'I'm feeling unlucky" button on their main page and get everyone to shout out 'Peakoil' when their beermug reaches half-empty.
When the #1 choice for a tattoo is an OilDrum on the bicep, then I will consider Peakoil Outreach a success.
Bob Shaw in Phx,Az Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
Hello TODers,
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2089-2534805,00.html
---------------------------------
Zimbabwe, the land of dying children
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Remember When the Music
by Harry Chapin
Remember when the music
Came from wooden boxes strung with silver wire
And as we sang the words, it would set our minds on fire,
For we believed in things, and so we'd sing.
Remember when the music
Brought us all together to stand inside the rain
And as we'd join our hands, we'd meet in the refrain,
For we had dreams to live, we had hopes to give.
Remember when the music
Was the best of what we dreamed of for our children's time
And as we sang we worked, for time was just a line,
It was a gift we saved, a gift the future gave.
Remember when the music
Was a rock that we could cling to so we'd not despair,
And as we sang we knew we'd hear an echo fill the air
We'd be smiling then, we would smile again.
Oh all the times I've listened, and all the times I've heard
All the melodies I'm missing, and all the magic words,
And all those potent voices, and the choices we had then,
How I'd love to find we had that kind of choice again.
Remember when the music
Was a glow on the horizon of every newborn day
And as we sang, the sun came up to chase the dark away,
And life was good, for we knew we could.
Remember when the music
Brought the night across the valley as the day went down
And as we'd hum the melody, we'd be safe inside the sound,
And so we'd sleep, we had dreams to keep.
And I feel that something's coming, and it's not just in the wind.
It's more than just tomorrow, it's more than where we've been,
It offers me a promise, it's telling me "Begin",
I know we're needing something worth believing in.
Remember when the music
Came from wooden boxes strung with silver wire
And as we sang the words, it would set our minds on fire,
For we believed in things, and so we'd sing.
Bob Shaw in Phx,Az Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
Thanks for this and all your posts; it hits the spot exactly. Music is the social canary in the coal mine. When it stops, I get worried and it seems as though nothing musically significant has happened since Reagan. Bad sign. When we get songs about solar panel installation blues or windmill jamborees, I'll breathe and sing easier.
Music has not stopped developing since Reagan. It has been driven underground by the Telecommunications Act in 1995. Since then, nothing has had a second of commercial airplay that does not pass some executive's sales potential calculation.
Search the internet & you will find HUNDREDS of timely, socially relevant musical artists. In my preferred genre alone (progressive rock) there are dozens who have released entire albums with very pronounced anti-facism, dystopic or even apocalyptic themes. Just a few that spring to mind...
Proto-Kaw
IQ
Threshold
Dream Theater
Ayreon
Spock's Beard
Neal Morse
The Flower Kings
Kaipa
Shadow Gallery
Arena
Dimension X
O.K., but the greatest music was from the sixties and early seventies. The best of the sixties music still stands tall, while most of that from the eighties onward is second-rank or lower. Sometimes musical genius flowers . . . sometimes it fades. I don't think anybody knows why, though there are dozens of theories about how music is a reflection of the culture and society around it.
Excuse me if I sound blunt, Don, but the biggest factor is the listener's willingness to search & remain open minded. There are a whole lot of people who say what you said, simply because they like what they heard when they were 20 & don't think it could ever get better and don't bother to keep up. Well I also like what I heard when I was 20, but I am 51 now & have found something to admire every singe year since. And a some of it is WAY better than my personal favorites that I was impressed with at that most impressionable age.
No, the quality of music really has been declining over the past 20 years. If you are one of those who believe music sounded better in the old days, and that new music is no more than noise. Guess what, you're right.
And here for a longer discussion.
Interesting links, Hurin! Compression has been over-used since it was first invented, and it seems more insidious than ever. But it still all boils down to a few big turds in the mass media controlling what everyone hears, and abusive post-production is just one of the tools. The artists are still there - they make their own recordings, release them on their own labels, and pretty much stay poor unfortunately. People who don't care enough to dig for the Prime Rib think McBurgers are the only thing being made today, but its not true. Its just another facet of our homogenized, corporate-controlled, money-driven McCulture.
The artists are still there - they make their own recordings, release them on their own labels, and pretty much stay poor unfortunately.
You wish, after I first heard about this, I got a program that can show the waveform of a music track, and played around with it. And independent artists are just as crappy and noisey as established ones.
A good examply is Nerina Pallot with 'Fires' on her own label Idaho. The socalled 'music' is so compressed that the waveform is almost completely rectangular.
Music has become almost totally commodified, like everything else in our wonderful Capitalist society.
Playing an instrument is such a forbidden activity that it can get you evicted, that people without a lot to spend are paying $10 an hour (which is probably more than they make) to rent a room to play in downtown - Those studios are for bands to practice together, you say, but No, I always hear individuals, sometimes an individual and teacher. Most are terrible too.
Unless you are in that Top Quintile, chances are you are not going to concerts, either classical (worth hearing and a bit cheaper) or pop (not worth hearing and actually a bit more expensive. If you're like me, an average person, you're hearing your live music from street buskers, or the occasional bar band or one time, a concert in the local Senior Center, it was cool, had the Shrinky Dinks and some other bands, and a nice mosh pit going.
I first heard a clarinet played by a busker - an old guy who learned it in a more musical, disappeared, American culture. I first heard a mandolin live among the buskers at Santa Cruz. The only good guitar that's live I've heard has been hearing it by listening to buskers. There are some good blues jams locally and if I were more into bars I'm sure I'd hear some "good shit".
I don't know if R. Crumb is peak-oil savvy, but look into what he's said (and drawn) about the commercialization and decay of music in the US.
That's a simple one Don.
There was a revolution going on.
I could try to tell you what it felt like every day but Wordsworth did it better - "to be young and alive" in Paris during the Terror.
Enormous potential is released when social barriers are lowered and then removed.
We've had three decades plus of Thermidorean reaction and it's a wonder artists function at all.
If that's too theoretical just think of all the local radio stations playing local artists in the 60's. Corporations hated that and they stamped it out. Against much popular resistance, but hey, corporations rule and what listeners want don't matter. Think of all the local venues that presented full programs. Think of the money a musician could make back then. I know a number of first-call musicians who made more money as local teenage rockers than they do as virtuosos today. Young rockers now play for free if they can get a room at all. And of course the money bought a hell of a lot more in the 60's than it does now.
If there were a Hendrix or a Miles or a Lennon today they would just be ignored. James Brown or Merle Haggard would have no chance of being released from their prison cells.
I agree.
Never was music better than the summer of love, 1967: The music reflected the revolutions in sexuality, the rejection of racism, the rejection of the Vietnam War--and the rejection of authority in general.
Could a musical like "Hair" be wildly popular today? I doubt it.
You and I were fortunate to be young in the sixties, but I actually grew up in the forties and the fifties. Music really didn't take off until the mid fifties, but by the mid-sixties popular music was as good as it ever was or ever has been in the U.S.
I feel sorry for the youngsters who missed the Revolution, missed the excitement, missed the Filmore Auditorium, missed Woodstock, and even missed Altamont. They truly have no idea what they missed.
Even the Kingston Trio was more exciting and more into social satire than any popular group today. Could a group such as the Kingston Trio make it today? If so, where is it?
Don,
Have to agree with Jeffrey on this one. I lived thru the sixties, from Joan Baez and folk to the rocking of the Rolling Stones. Smokey Robinson and the Miracles. Couldn't beat it.
Today has their greats also. My kids introduced me to early Green Day, to the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Rage against the Machine, and my ears wondered at this at first. I'd paid for violins, classical and fiddlin lessons, he'd played with a youth symphony. But the Smashing Pumkins blended classical and other genres. I had to listen harder.
For Christmas he gave me a cd of Iron Horse playing all Modest Mouse covers solely in bluegrass tempo with mandolins, banjos and fiddles. Amazing.
I still prefer Baroque and Chamber music though.
Smashing Pumpkins? Everyone is entitled to their own taste and preferences but this is low. Demeaning to the great artists you mention at the top.
I remember one night when Pumpkins put on the first of oh so many farewell concerts at the Aragon Brawlroon. I was just down the street catching Patricia Barber's late show. Acoustic piano, vocals, acoustic bass. Jazz. Twenty souls in audience. When the Aragon let out the bar filled with 200 half-deaf Pumpkins fans. And in two hours a real entertainer (Patricia) had convinced every last one of them which of the two shows they heard that night was more memorable.
Billy Corgan still the better promoter. Patricia big in France.
Patty only one of legions who can blow Pumpkins out the door.
Any of the hired-gun sidemen on Pumpkins recordings way ahead of the principals.
I never thought I'd care one bit for them either, just enjoy some of their blending of classical and punk, which an old man isn't supposed to like. Never have seen the sense in mosh pits either, tho I imagine they can be as erotic as some of the Woodstock antics.
Your show above sounds great-I think acoustic music in a small, intimate setting can't be topped. I recall David Bromberg and his whole review in an 80 seat niteclub, or Leo Kottke in a small theater the size of a large classroom. Anyway, my point is there's great music all along, from jazz to bluegrass, big band (Glenn Miller was superb) to Sam Cooke, Emmylou to Aretha to Lucinda Williams, Beethoven to the Beach Boys to Pearl Jam. You hurt yourself by limiting your taste-I'll even tune an ear to Garth Brooks. I draw the line at Muzak, Brittany Spears.
I discovered the local Big Band station and listened rapt for a while, then after a while it got to me....... everyone was so friggin' HAPPY HAPPY JOY JOY all the time, the music was so fast and relentlessly cheerful..... you see by the end of the 1930s the "Streighten Up and Fly Right" (Or else!!!!) commercialization of music had begun. This is why R. Crumb is nostalgic for the stuff of the 1920s and earlier - when the music "industry" hadn't become the octopus it is now.
I find I like the folkies on KPFA etc. and the real jazz guys like Miles and Chet and so on much more.
I used to have an old big band musician who lived on the next block. I'd catch him playing clarinet, sax, flute, while sitting on the bus bench or sometimes on the beach. Also saw him a few times on stage and yes he was SO HAPPY there. And always a soloist and a star. Don't want to name him 'cause I also saw him regularly in the alley picking through garbage, pushing a cart with his findings.
He couldn't afford the city anymore, moved South. I miss him.
http://www.wumb.org/home/index.php
Four types of folk streams and Celtic, 24/7 internet music
He's not new, but very good: Loudon Wainright III.
(Quote)"If there were a Hendrix or a Miles or a Lennon today they would just be ignored. James Brown or Merle Haggard would have no chance of being released from their prison cells"
All of those you mentioned have (multiple) analogues today, and yes they ARE being ignored.
Would The Beatles be The Beatles if they had been ignored? Music has to have an audience at some point or it can't develop. I hear a lot of talented young players who sound great at first blush and just seem autistic a few years later.
As for JB and Merle Haggard, not to mention a great many others, I'm quite sure they are being ignored under lock and key. Haggard was a three-time loser before his career ever started and I, for one, am glad to have have lived in a world that once knew forgiveness.
Should read JB, MH analogs
This article at 321 Energy is a must-read:
http://www.321energy.com/editorials/banks/banks010807.html
Too bad TOD can't post it as a guest article as it deserves widespread exposure.
I agree. I would like to see a TOD critique of this piece.
I read it...or rather tried to but soon gave up. I then went to his conclusion and it was much of the same.
I soon tired of hearing about his 'new textbook' and other tirades.
http://www.forbes.com/business/feeds/afx/2007/01/05/afx3301914.html
This might have been posted and discussed earlier,if so ignore it. But that is a real substantial reduction for Norway in a year. Norway is one of the few large major stable exporters and this reduction of more than 15% in a year. Yet the market seems obsessed witha supply glut.
Aside: My posting on Peak Oil Medicine linked off of "Predicting global health trends: why peak oil matters" above may have failed. So, still trying to do my part to change the world:
Quick on the heels of Peak Oil, for a variety of related reasons, is Peak Food!
Some books in this vein:
Feeding the Ten Billion: Plants and population growth (1998, Lloyd T. Evans)
Outgrowing the Earth: The Food Security Challenge in an Age of Falling Water Tables and Rising Temperatures (2005, L Brown, Earth Policy Institute)
on-line version: http://www.earth-policy.org/Books/Out/Contents.htm
Out of the Earth: Civilization and the Life of the Soil, (1992, Daniel Hillel)
Something New Under the Sun: An Environmental History of the Twentieth-Century World (Global Century Series) (2001, John R. McNeill, Georgetown University)
author website: http://explore.georgetown.edu/people/mcneillj/
The Little Green Handbook: Seven Trends Shaping the Future of Our Planet (2006, Nielsen, R)
author website: http://home.iprimus.com.au/nielsens/
I guess you're basically promoting veganism then, hehe. ;)- j/k
Re. the article on War and Cheap oil (link)
In NYT fashion, it mentions ‘military’ factors that hide the ‘real’ price of oil and push the price up. A comprehensible example is the sagging output of Iraq, leading to a ‘tight market’ which has supposedly raises price. Then there are the ‘hidden’ costs, again, a simple example, naval patrols in times of tension, they cost, and so, under some reckoning, might be ‘ventilated’ (that is the word the Swiss use, and I love it) on the cost of oil itself. Rather as if one would ventilate the energy/money required to build a car on the price of oil, after all, the car will drive to the gas station to get the oil!
That oil is an exhaustible pool and that the DESC (Defense Energy support Center) is one of the biggest buyers in the world (the biggest, under the definition of an organization, company, etc. - legal entity who buys) and that their consumption is mind boggingly huge and increasing wildly year by year or day by day (think troop surge!) is apparently not germane.
see for ex. this blogger (short post, with links to official docs)
http://karbuz.blogspot.com/2006/02/us-military-oil-consumption.html
When I scroll down and link to an article and then hit the back button to return, I wind up at the top of the page - not where I linked from. Before the recent update this was not the case. The way it is now is annoying and wastes time. Is this considered a glitch?
Re: "Blood and Oil," "Oil. The Fast Vanishing..." etc.
According to, "Blood and Oil," Iraq is about to throw open the doors of its oil sector to, "western oil majors."
According to, "Oil. The Fast Vanishing..." Iraq is about to open its oil sector to private companies, "the first middle eastern country to ever do so."
Who writes these articles and why is anyone taking them seriously?
It should be more than obvious to anyone by this point that Chinese, Indian, and Japanese companies are far more likely than, "western oil majors," to win an eventual bidding war for Iraqi oil assets. Chinese, Indian, and Japanese companies have been outbidding western oil majors for several years now -- around the world -- and nothing indicates that Iraq will be any different. The reason behind this trend is that China, India, and Japan feel increasingly desperate with regards to their future energy supplies and are thus willing to pay a premium over what is being offered by their western counterparts (who have to respond to shareholders and are thus more concerned with shorter term profits). The idea that the U.S. military can somehow force the contracts into Exxon and Chevron's hands is false. The Iraqi government is already actively reaching out to China, India, and Japan, since these three countries are the ones who have offered the most interest in becoming involved in developing Iraq's oil sector (Exxon and Chevron don't want anything to do with it at this point). This is all happening completely outside the control of the U.S. and British armed forces.
As for Iraq being, "the first middle eastern country" to open its oil sector to private companies, this is obiviously ridiculous. Saudi Arabia did it for a long time. Iran did it for a long time. Saudi Arabia is probably the model that Iraq should follow. When oil was first discovered in SA, they obviously had zero capability to develop it. Looking out for their own interests, they allowed western oil companies to come in. Over the years, they learned from these western oil companies, built up their own capabilities, and eventually sent the western companies packing and formed a state-run oil monopoly. Iraq is in a similar situation today. They seem to feel that it is in their short term interests to allow foreign participation/investment in some parts of their oil sector. They are also planning to continue pumping large quantities of oil through their own state-run oil company. At some point in the future, they may well feel that it is time to ask the foreigners (the majority of whom will not be westerners) to leave and fold everything into an Iraqi-government-owned oil monopoly.
As for the PSA's, if there was only one oil company in the world (say, Exxon), these agreements would obviously not be to Iraq's advantage. But in the real world, since there are many oil majors and state-run oil companies, all of whom will be bidding against each other to acquire the rights to Iraqs oil assets, I think these agreements will probably turn out to be quite favorable to Iraq. Those 20% numbers that you see today will probably come down to 15% or 10% depending on how bad China, India, Japan, Europe, and the U.S. want to get their hands on Iraq's oil (the level of interest in Iraq's oil could be quite high due to high oil prices, increased demand, peaking of many oil producing regions, etc.).
For the life of me, I can't understand why the Iraqi government shouldn't be able to do what they think is right to get their oil sector moving again. I like most of the ideas they've put forward so far. A little foreign investment probably won't be a bad thing. Keeping 2 million BPD under state control (and trying to increase that state-controlled production level in the future) is also a good strategy. Starting a bidding war by reaching out to China, India, Japan, Russia, Europe, the U.S., etc. simultaneously, also seems smart. Overall, I would say that the thesis of many of these articles that are appearing (that the U.S. has now succeeded in taking total control of Iraq's oil wealth and will be handing it over to Exxon shortly) is false.
I agree.
Re: bidding war for Iraqi oil assets
And if you're going to develop those assets, bring your own army with you. Or hire one. So many things go into upstream E&P costs...
I predict booming growth in mercenary troops. There are already tens of thousands of mercs guarding the oil facilities in Iraq, and when they get up to two or three hundred thousand I predict oil output in Iraq will increase greatly.
The U.S. could fight its war in Iraq much more efficiently and with less political cost just by employing mercenaries. Look at all the illegal immigrants to the U.S.: Dress them up in uniforms, train them with assault rifles and send a few hundred thousand of them to Iraq to settle things down.
Today a guy told me that Wackenhut had more troops in Iraq than Britain. No citation, just another unsourced anecdote. That's the American owned Wackenhut that does Department of Defence and nuclear power plant security, not the Danish Group 4 Falck owned Wackenhut that does mostly industrial security. The two split a few years ago.
Excellent points. If you haven't already, I would recommend Daniel Yergin's The Prize. It is an excellent history of Western involvement in oil-producing nations. There is much emphasis on Iran, Kuwait, Libya, and Saudi Arabia. The book was published about the same time as the first Gulf War, so it starts to get hurried about 1985. I am hoping he will write a sequel soon.
Because they're a puppet "government" in an occupied country, with the occupier not giving a rat's behind what the Iraqi goverrnment wants? Maybe it's not that outrageous to suggest that the whole occupation is in view of exactly this sort of thing, to secure the oil for the US and its friends. Remember: Saddam had already signed contracts with non-US/UK companies.
India and China are too late, the bidding is over, the deals have been signed. Japan is still our ally, so they'll get their share. Japan holds more US securities than China, that translates as more leverage, just in case the Chinese would want to use that argument.
And there's still the matter of Iraq's debt to deal with. And Jimmy Boy's our man:
RE: Blood and oil: How the West will profit from Iraq's most precious commodity
In 2003, James Baker III was named by Bush, without consulting the House, as his "Special Envoy on Debt", Iraqi debt that is. His task was to "restructure" Iraq's sovereign debt. It didn't matter that neither Bush nor Baker were sovereign of Iraq, even though that is essential when negotiating these matters. Iraq still has no sovereign.
Iraq's debt, as far as is known, stood at $120-130 biilion, a huge sum for such a poor and small country, certainly one that rich in oil. Let's leave aside why they got so deep in red ink, though that's a good story too.
The majority of the debt was owed to Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, friends of the family one might say. In essence, a US presidential special envoy was appointed to settle the debts between two (or three) other nations. At the cost of the US taxpayer. It's all part of the game.
Of course, the only way Iraq could ever pay its debts was through exploitation of its resources. And so Baker, over 3 years ago, started dividing Iraq's oil among western companies. It may seem long, 3 years for a few contracts, but don't forget that the principal players are not necessarily interested in bringing the oil to market tomorrow morning.
The Saudi's are wary of a glut of oil on the market, for obvious price-related reasons, and they have a couple political/religious logs in the fire as well (power in OPEC, power in the region, Shia vs Sunni etc).
The US just wants to sit on both the region, and the oil. In case of further military adventures, they now have a solid central base to operate from (no, they won't leave), and one that has the fuel in the ground to power the machinery for the grander schemes.
The oil companies would like the profits now, but they are bought off with extremely high future profit margins, some of which will probably have to be paid to Kuwait and the Saudi's as part of the debt payments.
The Iraqi people might want some relief from debts and financial struggles, but who cares what they want? Tricky thing about many of the PSA-like deals is that they often only start paying to the host when all facility investments have been written off (see Putin's anger over Sakhalin II). The Iraqi's may not see a penny for the next 25 years. There may not be any Iraqi's left in 25 years. There may be no Iraq left.
If anyone was surprised to see James Baker head the Iraq Study Group: well, he'd been in the region for years. Baker's law firm, Baker Botts, represents the House of Saud, and got rid of the claim of trillions of dollars that families of 9/11 victims wanted to lay against Saudi Arabia, for its role in financing the terrorists. On the morning of 9/11, Baker was in a meeting in the Ritz-Carlton in Washington with members of the Saudi royal family, as well as perhaps a few Bin Ladens.
The fact that a number of (Anglo-American) western oil companies are offered prime deals is not the weirdest thing going on. What remains hidden is a lot more interesting. Saudi Arabia plays a big role in the background, and Israel's threats vs Iran are not far behind, though today's "revelations" deserve a pinch of salt. By the way, Israel needs oil even more than they need water.
Well, the U.S. press isn't writing them. The two articles today were from the British Independent. I find it rather interesting that so much of this subject appears to be taboo in mainstream U.S. discussion. Who would even know of the proposed Iraqi oil law if it weren't from reading foreign sources?
Why is anybody taking them seriously? Because they propose credible answers to a question which was never adequately answered by those in charge: why did the U.S. invade Iraq?
Sunman,
I couldn't agree more that the U.S. invaded Iraq to get at the oil reserves. My point is that they've failed. The PSA's will be open to all bidders and Exxon and co. are unlikely to put up the highest offers. If they do plan to outbid China and Japan, Iraq will be getting a great deal. My thinking is that if I were running Iraq right now and wanted to do what was best for Iraq economically, I would be doing pretty much what Al Maliki is doing. At this stage in the game, Iraq will benefit from some level of foreign investment/involvement in the oil sector.
But HeIsSoFly makes a point. How could there possibly be a fair auction in Iraq under US occupation? Is anything in Iraq transparent? They couldn't even pull off a hanging without multiple suspicious occurrences.
If the bid amounts are not going to be made public, then the fix is in. Because China will not remain silent if it's defeated by a lower bid after the Unocal case.
I don't know much about trading or contracts. Will these bids be open to public scrutiny so that we can judge if Iraqi officials choose the one which is the most economically favorable for their country?
Yesterday I received my copy of Richard Heinberg’s latest Museletter (subscription only at http://richardheinberg.com/museletter, though November and earlier issues are free and this one will be eventually). Topic: Bridging Peak Oil and Climate Change Activism. It’s 9 pages and well worth reading. I hope I’ll be forgiven for quoting this much, tho my excuse is that many paragraphs are one sentence!
Shortly after reading Heinberg’s essay, I was excited to see Jerome a Paris’ dKos diary April 14 - day of climate change action.
Read the rest of Bill’s letter at http://www.stepitup2007.org/.
robert l nardelli resigns from home depot because he is not earning his keep..... is awarded $ 210 million "exit" compensation.........and people are "investing" in this shit ?
Sometimes the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing:
Dark cloud over good works of Gates Foundation
A TIMES INVESTIGATION By Charles Piller, Edmund Sanders and Robyn Dixon, Times Staff Writers
January 7, 2007
"Saudi Aramco has selected GE Oil & Gas business for supplying gas turbines to the Southern Area seawater capacity expansion project in Ghawar - the world’s largest oil field - and the Khurais oil field.
GE will deliver 12 mechanical drive packages, including seven driven by MS5002C gas turbines and five by MS5002D gas turbines. The expansion project will help to increase Saudi Aramco’s production."
Any comments on what lies underneath this purchase?
A serious amount of horsepower, for one thing:
MS5002C/D Gas Turbine
This was in the Saturday NYT.
The Land of Rising Conservation
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* PrintJanuary 6, 2007
The Land of Rising Conservation
By MARTIN FACKLER
TOKYO, Jan. 5 — In many countries, higher oil prices have hurt pocketbooks and led to worries about economic slowdowns. But here in Japan, Kiminobu Kimura, an architect, says he has not felt the pinch. In fact, his monthly energy bill is lower than a year ago.
A reason is his new home fuel cell, a machine as large and quiet as a filing cabinet that sits in front of his house and turns hydrogen into electricity and cold water into hot — at a fraction of regular utility costs. But even with the futuristic device, which is available for now only in Japan, Mr. Kimura has not let up on the other shortcuts that leave him unscathed by last year’s oil squeeze.
Energy-efficient appliances abound in the many corners of his cramped home. There is the refrigerator that beeps when left open and the dishwasher that is compact enough to sit on the kitchen counter. In some homes, room heaters have a sensor that directs heat only toward occupants; there are “energy navigators” that track a home’s energy use.
And then Mr. Kimura, 48, says there are the little things that his family of four does to squeeze fuel bills, like reusing warm bath water to wash laundry and bicycling to buy groceries.
“It’s not just technology, it’s a whole mind-set,” said Hitoshi Ikuma, a specialist in energy issues at the Japan Research Institute. “Energy conservation is almost an obsession here among government, companies, regular citizens, everyone.”
Japan is the most energy-efficient developed country on earth, according to most specialists, who say it is much better prepared than the United States to prosper in an era of higher global energy prices. And if there is any lesson that Japan can offer to Americans, they say, it is that there is no one fix-all solution to living with oil above $50 a barrel.
Rather, as Mr. Kimura shows, it is a combination of many things, from the most advanced technologies to the simplest frugality in everyday life — and an obsession with saving energy that keeps his family huddled in a single heated room during winter.
Japan tops most global comparisons of energy efficiency in wealthy nations. Its population and economy are each about 40 percent as large as that of the United States, yet in 2004 it consumed less than a quarter as much energy as America did, according to the International Energy Agency, which is based in Paris.
Japan’s obsession with conservation stems from an acute sense of insecurity in a resource-poor nation that imports most its energy from the volatile Middle East, a fact driven home here by the 1970s shocks. The guiding hand of government has also played a role, forcing households and companies to conserve by raising the cost of gasoline and electricity far above global levels. Taxes and price controls make a gallon of gasoline in Japan currently cost about $5.20, twice America’s more market-based prices.
The government in turn has used these tax revenues to help Japan seize the lead in renewable energies like solar power, and more recently home fuel cells. One way has been a subsidy of about $51,000 for each home fuel cell. This allowed Mr. Kimura to buy his cell last year for about $9,000, far below production cost. His cell, which generates one kilowatt-hour of energy per hour, provides just under half of his household’s electricity, and has cut his electricity bill by the same amount, he said.
The device works by converting natural gas into hydrogen, which the fuel cell then uses to generate electricity. Heat released by the process is used to warm water.
The first two fuel cells were installed in the prime minister’s residence in April 2005. Since then, some 1,300 have been sold, according to the trade ministry. The ministry forecasts that as sales pick up, production cost will fall to about $5,000 by decade’s end. Experts say that Japan is far more willing to embrace new technologies than the United States, where opposition to hydrogen storage tanks in Tarrytown, N.Y., forced General Motors to scrap an experimental filling station for fuel-cell cars last year.
Higher energy prices have also created strong domestic demand in Japan for more conventional and new energy-saving products of all sorts. That has spurred the invention and development of things like low-energy washing machines and televisions and high-mileage cars and hybrid vehicles, experts say. Japanese factories also learned how to cut energy use and become among the most efficient in the world.
Companies like Mitsubishi Heavy Industries are now reaping the benefits in booming overseas sales of their highly efficient electric turbines, steel blast furnaces and other industrial machinery, particularly in the United States. The environment ministry forecasts that exports will help turn energy conservation into a $7.9 billion industry in Japan by 2020, about 10 times its size in 2000.
“Japan has taught itself how to survive with energy prices that are twice as high as everywhere else,” said Kouichi Iwama, an economics professor at Wako University who advises the Japanese Parliament on energy policy.
But with a few exceptions like cars, many of Japan’s efficient consumer products have yet to make their way overseas, according to corporate executives. Partly, that is because while more energy-efficient, they are also more expensive. But another reason is that many appliances here are designed for Japan’s conservation-conscious lifestyle, which includes things like smaller homes and a lack of central heating.
Mr. Kimura says he, his wife, and two teenage children all take turns bathing in the same water, a common practice here. Afterward, the still-warm water is sucked through a rubber tube into the nearby washing machine to clean clothes. Wet laundry is hung outside to dry or under a heat lamp in the bathroom.
“In Japan, it’s natural to think about saving energy,” Mr. Kimura explains. “We learned not to waste from our parents, who had learned it from the hardship of the war and after,” he said.
The different approach is also apparent in the layout of Mr. Kimura’s home, which at 1,188 square feet is about the average size of a house in Japan but only about half as big as the average American one. The rooms are also small, making them easier to heat or cool. The largest is the living room, which is about the size of an American bedroom.
During winter, the entire family, including the miniature dachshund, gathers here, which is often the only room heated. Like most Japanese homes, Mr. Kimura’s does not have central heating. The hallways, stairwell and bathrooms are left cold. The three bedrooms have wall-mounted heaters, which are used only when the rooms are occupied, and switched off at night.
The living room is kept toasty by hot water running through pipes under the floor. Mr. Kimura says such ambient heat saves money. He says the energy bill for his home is about 20,000 yen ($168) a month. Central heating alone would easily double or triple his energy bill, he says.
“Central heating is just too extravagant,” says Mr. Kimura, who is solidly middle class.
The government has tried to foster a culture of conservation with regular campaigns like this winter’s Warm Biz, a call to businesspeople to don sweaters and long johns under their gray suits so that office thermostats could be set lower. It has also encouraged development of energy-saving appliances with its Top Runner program, which has set goals for reducing energy use.
Products that meet the goals are awarded a green sticker, while those that fail get an orange sticker. Japan’s trade and industry ministry says consumers heed the stickers, pushing manufacturers to raise the energy efficiency. The average air-conditioner now uses two-thirds less electricity than in 1997, and the average freezer 23 percent less, the ministry said.
The savings add up. The average household here used 4,177 kilowatt- hours of electricity in 2001, the most recent figure, according to the Jyukankyo Research Institute in Tokyo. In the same year, the average American household consumed more than twice that, or 10,655 kilowatt hours, according to the Energy Department.
“The Japanese use less energy, there’s no doubt about that,” said Alan K. Meier, a scientist specializing in energy efficiency at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California. “Some of it is more efficient appliances, but these are only part of a different lifestyle and one that’s more energy-conscious.”
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By MARTIN FACKLER
Published: January 6, 2007
TOKYO, Jan. 5 — In many countries, higher oil prices have hurt pocketbooks and led to worries about economic slowdowns. But here in Japan, Kiminobu Kimura, an architect, says he has not felt the pinch. In fact, his monthly energy bill is lower than a year ago.
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Ko Sasaki for The New York Times
It is a rarity to see all the lights ablaze at Kiminobu Kimura’s home in Tokyo, where a fuel cell turns hydrogen into electricity and cold water into hot. The Kimura family heats very few rooms, and recycles its bath water.
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Ko Sasaki for The New York Times
Kiminobu Kimura of Tokyo uses a home fuel cell, a machine that resembles a filing cabinet and sits in front of his house.
A reason is his new home fuel cell, a machine as large and quiet as a filing cabinet that sits in front of his house and turns hydrogen into electricity and cold water into hot — at a fraction of regular utility costs. But even with the futuristic device, which is available for now only in Japan, Mr. Kimura has not let up on the other shortcuts that leave him unscathed by last year’s oil squeeze.
Energy-efficient appliances abound in the many corners of his cramped home. There is the refrigerator that beeps when left open and the dishwasher that is compact enough to sit on the kitchen counter. In some homes, room heaters have a sensor that directs heat only toward occupants; there are “energy navigators” that track a home’s energy use.
And then Mr. Kimura, 48, says there are the little things that his family of four does to squeeze fuel bills, like reusing warm bath water to wash laundry and bicycling to buy groceries.
“It’s not just technology, it’s a whole mind-set,” said Hitoshi Ikuma, a specialist in energy issues at the Japan Research Institute. “Energy conservation is almost an obsession here among government, companies, regular citizens, everyone.”
Japan is the most energy-efficient developed country on earth, according to most specialists, who say it is much better prepared than the United States to prosper in an era of higher global energy prices. And if there is any lesson that Japan can offer to Americans, they say, it is that there is no one fix-all solution to living with oil above $50 a barrel.
Rather, as Mr. Kimura shows, it is a combination of many things, from the most advanced technologies to the simplest frugality in everyday life — and an obsession with saving energy that keeps his family huddled in a single heated room during winter.
Japan tops most global comparisons of energy efficiency in wealthy nations. Its population and economy are each about 40 percent as large as that of the United States, yet in 2004 it consumed less than a quarter as much energy as America did, according to the International Energy Agency, which is based in Paris.
Japan’s obsession with conservation stems from an acute sense of insecurity in a resource-poor nation that imports most its energy from the volatile Middle East, a fact driven home here by the 1970s shocks. The guiding hand of government has also played a role, forcing households and companies to conserve by raising the cost of gasoline and electricity far above global levels. Taxes and price controls make a gallon of gasoline in Japan currently cost about $5.20, twice America’s more market-based prices.
The government in turn has used these tax revenues to help Japan seize the lead in renewable energies like solar power, and more recently home fuel cells. One way has been a subsidy of about $51,000 for each home fuel cell. This allowed Mr. Kimura to buy his cell last year for about $9,000, far below production cost. His cell, which generates one kilowatt-hour of energy per hour, provides just under half of his household’s electricity, and has cut his electricity bill by the same amount, he said.
The device works by converting natural gas into hydrogen, which the fuel cell then uses to generate electricity. Heat released by the process is used to warm water.
The first two fuel cells were installed in the prime minister’s residence in April 2005. Since then, some 1,300 have been sold, according to the trade ministry. The ministry forecasts that as sales pick up, production cost will fall to about $5,000 by decade’s end. Experts say that Japan is far more willing to embrace new technologies than the United States, where opposition to hydrogen storage tanks in Tarrytown, N.Y., forced General Motors to scrap an experimental filling station for fuel-cell cars last year.
Higher energy prices have also created strong domestic demand in Japan for more conventional and new energy-saving products of all sorts. That has spurred the invention and development of things like low-energy washing machines and televisions and high-mileage cars and hybrid vehicles, experts say. Japanese factories also learned how to cut energy use and become among the most efficient in the world.
Companies like Mitsubishi Heavy Industries are now reaping the benefits in booming overseas sales of their highly efficient electric turbines, steel blast furnaces and other industrial machinery, particularly in the United States. The environment ministry forecasts that exports will help turn energy conservation into a $7.9 billion industry in Japan by 2020, about 10 times its size in 2000.
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* 2
A couple of news items from Iowa.
A consortium of 22 utility companies (many of them the rural electric co-ops) have selected a site near Dallas Center, Iowa for a compressed air energy storage system. The energy will be stored in a saline aquifer over 3000 ft down. The plan is to store the excess energy from wind turbines during high wind periods for use during low wind periods. I e-mailed several questions to the projects website and will update you if I get satisfactory answers. One question I asked was has the CAES capacity of the US ever been assessed? As helpful as a few days capacity would be what the California experience shows is the ability to store a few months worth of wind energy would be ideal.
The other item is that an interfaith workshop on how congregations and families can respond to the challenges GW will be held in Des Moines St Paul Cathedral on Feb. 3.
I am interested in details of CAES in Iowa. I know lots about hydro pumped storage (have toured a couple) but far less about air.
Any websites ? Links ?
Thanks,
Alan
Alan, hope you had a good holiday! :-)
Below, some links on CAES in general, the Iowa proposal in particular, and my own path, related to the above....
First, the most successful CAES facility yet built
Details of McIntosh CAES facility in Alabama:
http://www.caes.net/mcintosh.html
Alabama Electric Cooperative’s McIntosh compressed air energy storage (CAES) plant is designed to generate 100 MW (nominal) peaking and intermediate power and has a maximum power output of 110 MW. The plant design includes a 19-million-cubic-foot cavern as the air storage reservoir. The cavern was created in a salt dome by solution mining. The air is stored at a maximum pressure of approximately 1,050 psig. The plant is operated and monitored remotely from AEC’s Lowman Station, approximately 22 miles from McIntosh.
Per one of the design partners:
The plant is dispatched remotely from the cooperative’s central dispatch in Andalusia, Alabama, 120 miles from the site. This capability is made possible by microwave links from McIntosh’s distributed control system (DCS). As part of a joint venture, Washington Group provided:
• Engineering and design of all balance-of-plant systems and equipment, all structures and foundations
• Coordination of the mining contractor
• Integration of the turbo-machinery train into the overall plant design
• Engineering support during construction
• Construction and startup
http://www.wgint.com/submarket.php?id=24
Department of Energy description of McIntosh:
http://www.eere.energy.gov/de/cs_energy_storage.html#compressed_air
Wikipedia article, surprisingly short!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compressed_air_energy_storage
More from DOE but not much more:
http://www.eere.energy.gov/de/energy_storage.html
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
O.K., now for something a bit more radical (just for fun :-) http://powerelectronics.com/mag/power_leveraging_thermal_compressed/inde...
Quoting from the site:
“In examining these two energy storage mechanisms, Active Power discovered that a combination of the two approaches could overcome the drawbacks of each. Its system employs a small compressor to charge a bank of compressed air cylinders and an electrically heated block of steel with holes drilled in it to allow passage of air. In operation, compressed air from the cylinders is passed through the heated steel, which transfers its thermal energy efficiently to the air. The heated air is then used to drive a turbine/alternator, which generates electricity. Then, the alternator's output is converted to dc by a power supply within the system”
Active Power is essentially a proponent of flywheel type systems, as their home page http://www.activepower.com/index.asp?pg= indicates, but is working with CAES (Compressed Air Electric Storage) and Thermal storage in conjuction with thier flywheel systems
The flywheel has long been proposed, but has not yet delivered, as an alternative energy storage method, and is taken very seriously as an alternative:
http://www1.eere.energy.gov/femp/pdfs/fta_flywheel.pdf
There are currently two large scale CAES systems in the world, the well known McIntosh site in Alabama, and a site in Germany. However, a proposal to build one, in fact the biggest one ever built, in Norton Ohio, gained press attention several years ago:
http://pepei.pennnet.com/Articles/Article_Display.cfm?Section=Archives&S...
To this date, not much has come of it, and construction has not yet been started.
The most active group in the Electrical Storage area is:
http://www.electricitystorage.org/
They have done several interesting articles on all types of energy storage in thier newsletter, of which they have a link to archived ones and the newest (Dec 2006) on the left column.
Now, to the Iowa proposal:
A brief overview, from a blog, but reasonably well done:
http://jcwinnie.biz/wordpress/?p=1130
A much more involved presentation, very well done is here:
http://www.sandia.gov/ess/Publications/presen_haug.pdf
Remarks by Bob Haug, Executive Director of the Iowa Association of Municipal Utilities
http://www.cogeneration.net/compressed_air_energy_storage.htm
As is mentioned in several of the above links, the upside to Compressed Air Storage is simplicity and reliability with the McIntosh plant proving itself over 90% relieable over a long period of time (since the 1990's), and of course, no batteries to fail due to repeated cycling. The downside is expensive construction and conversion efficiency.
The Iowa plant is intended to act as a "battery" of a sort for the wind farm, but there is a built in limitation. Since the wind farm was built to produce electricity as used, the turbines are by design electric generation turbines. This means that the turbines have electrical generators and the electricity from these must be used to drive compression motors, to compress air, which is then released to drive generators to produce electricity. In other words, electricity is actually produced twice. This is of course damaging to efficiency. A more ideal situation would be if the wind turbines were by design compression turbines, driving mechanical compressors to compress air, which would then be released to drive turbines to power the generators. This would still not be 100% efficient, but it would be much more efficient than double conversion.
This is in fact the project that some partners and I have been working on, as described at my website http://www.irvingtondesign.com
The idea is to build lower to the ground slower vertical axis turbines (VAWT) rather than the higher more expensive, but faster three blade Horizontal axis (HAWT) electrical production turbines normally used.
I see this as "the road not taken" in the wind industry. The vertical axis turbine has been essentially dismissed by the wind industry. This is correct in relation to trying to drive a turbine to produce electricity. The Vertical turbine will not turn fast enough, and cannot be elevated to heights needed to capture clean high speed wind. Plus, there was a major hoax in the 1970's involving the "clotheline" turbine, a techically idiotic proposal using low speed vertical axis wind turbines to attempt to drive high speed generators. Investors were scammed, and many associate the VAWT as a scam, not understanding the technical issues involved.
However, VAWT (Vertical Axis Wind Turbines) are well designed for low speed pumping/compressing. They do not have to withstand high speeds, and therefore cheap, reliable, and can be built of less exotic materials. However, when attached to a generator/alternator they are useless. They MUST have some type of storage system to make them a viable system, this storage system acting as a way to "gear up" the speed of the system, and to take advantage of one of the great advantages of VAWT: They have a FAR higher utilization rate than the exotic expensive large megawatt three blade props. The high three blade turbines must have CLEAN (non turbulant, single directional) and FAST (usually above 15 knot) and STABLE (not too fast, as overspeed shuts down the wind turbine) wind. The drag type VAWT close to the ground can run in dirty, slow, and unstable air. It requires no directional control. It is in service, albeit at a lower efficiency, much more of the time than a high expensive type prop (which is only in utilization 30% to 35% of the time in most systems.
This has been a long way of saying that a low, drag type turbine, vertical axis type, can be married to a pumped hydro or compressed air system much more efficiently than the modern high tower horizontal three blade turbine can, and only one conversion step is needed: Mechanical power from the wind is compressed as air, and the compressed air is released through turbines to produce controlled, on demand electricity. It is a marriage made in heaven!
Sorry to go so long, but as you can see, you have me on one of my favorite subjects, and just one more example of the many roads to energy efficiency and alternatives not yet explored. As Robert Earl Keene would say, "The Road Goes On Forever, and The Party Never Ends....", or, the game is still afoot folks, you ain't seen nothin' yet, o.k., enough with the cliches, but so many people are attacking the wind alternative on reliability and "variability" issues, and it is obvious many of them are not even slightly aware of the many variations and alternatives we will soon be seeing. :-)
Roger Conner known to you as ThatsItImout
Have you considered improving your turbine's output by surrounding it with stator vanes with a top cover? The stator vanes can be made of cheap plastic and will multiply the catchment area for any given turbine.
Thomas,
Yes, we have tinkered with the stator vane idea, which is very workable on a smaller diameter rotor, and that brings up another whole debate (more small diameter rotors or fewer larger diameter ones?)
Also of interesting development and applicable only to VAWT designs is a way of reducing drag on the upwind side. Since a VAWT drag type rotor can never rotate faster than the wind speed (the blade or "cup coming upwind drags equal to the thrust or push on the wind catching side) the rotor is naturally self limiting on speed, thus preventing overspeed. While this is a good point, it could be helpful if the drag on the upwind side could be reduced juuuust a little, to enhance windspeed and increase the balance in favor of the thrust side. This could be done several ways...One is very ancient: If you know the direction the wind was coming from, you build a wall on what would always be the upwind side, but since we do not in most cases know that (they did on certain coastal turbines in the old world, and the Persians and Arabs pioneered the "sheltered" upwind side drag turbine), but, back to your vane idea, if an upwind half rotor shelter is provided, and can be rotated so that it changes with the wind direction, it shields the upwind side, and leaves the downwind side free to catch the wind stream.
We have also played with ducting cut into the rotors, so that the pressure is able to bleed through what the racers call NACA style ducting on the upwind side, but the ducts by design are blind to the downwind side, and so do not allow the pressure to bleed off....and another bit of work is hanging rotors that would swing up and bleed off pressure on the upwind and come back down into wind catching position on the downwind side....dang, what starts out as simple looking idea starts to pick up some complexities, don't it! :-)
Thanks for the feedback and thoughts,
Roger Conner known to you as ThatsItImout
My idea would be to have a minimum of 18 vanes arranged so they run tangentially out from the circle inscribed by the outer edge of the rotor. This would provide shielding for the upwind vanes and a faster flow on the downwind side without the need for additional moving parts. A change in wind direction means a different set of vanes are automatically engaged.
Interesting idea.
Have you talked to a patent attorney before freely posting your ideas here?
Why 18? Wouldn't 6 extensions in a hexagon pattern work also and wouldn't that be cheaper? Wouldn't 3 orthagonal vanes at 120 degrees also work?
Angles greater than 20 degrees do not result in as great an increase of velocity that is desired. A cover over the entire system is also a neccesary part and the posts used for the vanes can easily support the cover.
As for patents at this time I couldn't afford the first visit with the attorney let alone the thousands of dollars in patent fees. I believe it is best to have a product ready for the market before starting the patent process since you only get 20 years protection from the time of filing instead of 17 years from the time the patent is granted. Development of a product can easily eat up 5-10 years. The challenge of peak oil and especially global warming means alternatives to fossil fuels going on the market quickly is more important than my personal profit. Finally my idea is just a scale up of the gas turbine designs of the 1940s.
As mentioned here a few days ago, Pittsburgh is cutting back on transit services:
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/07007/751700-28.stm