DrumBeat: March 22, 2008
Posted by threadbot on March 22, 2008 - 9:03am
Now for some wise words from the readers of The Oil Drum...
“First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they fight you. Then you win.”
—Gandhi
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Cheney, Saudi king share some common views on oil-US
UK Tory Leader caught ignoring traffic laws while bicycling
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article3596576.ece
Would that ANY US Presidential candidate bicycled 25 minutes to work !
Best Hopes for Bicycling Politicians (even those that take short-cuts),
Alan
In Britain Cameron's cycling to work is something of a joke due to him bieng followed by a limo with his official boxes etc.
Actually, I can understand that. One in his position does work at home and on the weekends (reads secret white papers, etc.). Not only are the papers too bulky but they are a security risk on the bicycle.
An Iranian agent searching for Bush's plans against his country runs into Cameron, strong arms him and away he goes with the weekend's reading.
Still, a good example (and good exercise),
Alan
He received so much adverse comment when he was first caught with his chauffeur following on behind that he no longer does that. He has fitted a large pannier with locks on it. How confidential are the papers he carries in it, I don't know. Here is one of the pictures that were published in the Daily Mirror showing him shooting a red light approaching the Houses of Parliament with Big Ben on the left.
Reminds me of one of my favorite Britcoms, "Yes Minister". The bumbling official and his unelected civil servant, who actually ran the department.
Combining Preservation and Sustainability in the Big Easy
http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/story?id=51894
One for Alan!
Brad Pitt, and not I, can take credit for that. Despite some disconnection with reality that goes with celebrity, they are trying to help and are doing good here.
Best Hopes for Many Hands,
Alan
BTW, Brad Pitt is also better looking than I.
There's a conclusion here you might have missed: Plastic surgery to make you better looking will help you better promote commuter rail.
Best hopes for good looking commuter rail passengers.
Now Alan - and Future,
I think the "friendship version" of the oldie applies...
Just The Way You Are
By: Billy Joel
Don't go changing to try and please me,
You never let me down before.
And don't imagine you're too familiar,
And I don't see you anymore.
I would not leave you in times of trouble,
We never could have come this far.
(etc.)
If Alan got his face chiseled into Brad Pitt looks then when he stood up to lecture on commuter rail everyone would stop and listen and agree.
It might not be fair. But people listen more to extremely good looking people.
Hi Future,
re: "people listen more to extremely good looking people."
Well...good looking?...hmnnn.
In what "looks" category would you place, say, M. Gandhi, Mother Theresa...? Or..., well, many examples.
Some people have a "good-looking" vibe - you know?
My guess is some on TOD possess such a quality.
We'll see.
Dawn of a new nuclear age
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/mar/22/nuclearpower.energy
And:
New Nuclear Sites in the UK
http://www.guardian.co.uk/graphic/0,,2267374,00.html
Also from The Guardian today.
Britain and France to take nuclear power to the world
Think they're reading your posts :-)
Actually, I do have relations who report directly to Gordon Brown and Darling!- but I am the wicked uncle!:-)
A couple of questions...
Why would Sarkozy and France need or want a partnership with GB in the expansion of sales of nuclear power plants, since France has a most admirable record of safe nuclear power construction and operation?
Does anyone think this joint venture will turn out better than the SST (super-sonic transport), a boondoggle that even the wastrel US Government avoided?
"Britain and France are to sign a deal to construct a new generation of nuclear power stations and export the technology around the world in an effort to combat climate change."
Everywhere except Iran and any other muslim majority country that is.
Excepting Muslim nations on the southern coast of the Persian Gulf, of course !
Alan
The UK and France have already co-operated in exporting nuclear plant. After the 1956 Israeli invasion of Egypt, France supplied Israeli with the plant and the UK supplied the moderator -heavy water. Under the « atoms for peace » programme, Israel promised not to use the reactor for weapons production. Obviuosly the Israelis have kept their promise. Otherwise UK and France are obliged under international law to demand the return of the equipment and the heavy water.
Of course, it is well known that Gordon Brown's brother is employed by the French nuclear industry.
The map fails to show the first new British reactor, which just started construction on the Normandy coast :-)
EdF said that France did not now need this power and it would be primarily "for export".
Apparently, 8 EPRs (2 per site = 3.3 GW) are planned. A good first start if you get cracking (all done by 2022 ? 2028 ?), but 13 GW in toto (plus 1 GW from Sizewell B). Subtract 10% to 15% (20% in first years) for outages and the UK will have 11 to 12 GW of nuke (100% capacity factor).
LNG is a weak, and expensive, reed to depend upon.
The UK needs a Rush to Conservation and Wind (and a couple of GW of pumped storage and HV DC links to Norway & Iceland).
Best Hopes for Keeping the Lights On,
Alan
I recently found out that after a widespread outage that "scrammed" 9 reactors in the USA, it took 5 days for the reactors to return to 50% power and two weeks for them to return to 100% power. Discussed in a Drumbeat. Given that blackouts appear to be in the British future, plans should include this.
Hydro and pumped storage are considered the best sources of power when coming from a "black start". Wind will suffer no such restart delays as nuke, of course, but it lacks the modulation to meet demand as one section of the grid after another is restarted.
Great news about the Normandy plant, Alan!
I am less concerned than I was about Britain's ability to carry out a build, as reality finally seems to be dawning on the British establishment, as they are now talking about a 'partnership' with France.
There is no doubt in my mind as to whom will be very much the senior partner in this! - and that is no bad thing as the French have run consistently the most successful nuclear industry in the world, whereas the British industry has a long history of incompetence.
The French did their build in around 17 years, and at the start had nowhere near as developed an industry as they now have.
Another 18 possible sites have been designated in the UK, and a lot of the sites on the map also are OK for a single reactor, although the four most favourable can handle double reactors.
If gas prices go up as far as we think then this should rapidly become a rolling program of reactor builds, and the French would appear to have the capability to carry it out.
Although I agree with you about the desirability of wind turbine builds, sites on land are limited, certainly in England as opposed to the UK, and it now seems that off-shore wind is reckoned to cost around THREE times the price of the same actual average hourly output from nuclear - not the mere two times that I suggested to some controversy here! - in my view at those costs not a lot of it is likely to happen.
I foresee a MAJOR gap between new nukes and disappearing North Sea natural gas. When will 8 new EPRs on UK soil (and one on French soil and Sizewell B) be on-line ?
The extra 11 or 12 GW of steady power will be "nice" (half of your early summer 3 AM load), but hardly enough to get you through a long hard winter. NG will run out then, I fear. (from memory, UK min 25 GW, max demand 65 GW ?)
One can have an optimum solution for 2030+, but sounding the alarm and pushing the panic button in 2011 will still take about a decade to implement many new nukes. Many cold black-outed winter nights between panic and the nuke cavalry arriving. Far fewer cold nights till wind arrives.
The UK is setting itself up for a common design fault problem (all reactors of a common design, and a fault is found in the design).
This happened with the last French reactor design, N4. Fortunately, only 4 reactors were involved and they had to be shut down for some weeks/months and the French just sold less power to Germany et al. It also happened with Magnox reactors, but the Brits kept operating them despite the danger because blackouts were worse.
And remember that a nuke based grid, when it blackouts, stays blacked out for a week or two.
You like the nuke horse coming over the horizon, as do I, but I calculate too little, too late for the UK. Much more is needed in the next decade.
Best Hopes for Keeping the Lights On,
Alan
A UK in 2018 with 14 GW of nuke (see panic button), 35 MW of wind, 3 GW of pumped storage, HV DC links to Iceland & Norway as well as France, a depleted UK North Sea on it's last legs, 12% less demand due to conservation, as much LNG as it can afford, some Russian gas, and a bit more coal "could make it through". Global Warming may moderate your winters.
Much less that above, and I see multiple failure paths and you are too likely to tread down one of them.
Wouldn't the nuke designs that have worked reliably over the past 2 decades be the designs to use? Or will new designs necessarily be used because of perceived advantages in advances in nuke technology over the past several decades? At any rate, it seems obvious that one should take advantage of an experienced base of knowledge and technical skill.
Alan,
North Sea Gas has, for all intent and purposes, disappeared alredy.
We get critically low each winter and the margin to meet demand is becoming ever smaller.
We have had a series of very mild winters over the last ten years (forget what the press say about cold snaps: they are nothing).
I have fond memories and lots of great photos of the last true cold snap here. five feet of snow, midnight sledging, a whole week off work. Electrictiy off, water off. Lets see, that was about 10 years ago...
My 80 year old neighbor said thats what it was like every year in the 40's and 50's.
If we get a real cold snap (1/10 or 1 /20 years) Then we will struggle to keep heating and lights on.
One winter soon, and we here in the UK will 'depend on the kindess of strangers' .
Best hopes for a Mediterranian Climate and growing white grapes on the southern slopes of Mither Tap during AGW...
Its Nukes. If we want to live, Its Nukes.
And if you sup with the devil, take a long spoon.
Mither Tap (Mothers tit , not Mothers top as described)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bennachie
:-)
Nukes are NOT enough, soon enough.
Conservation (see German standards) can make a significant difference before the first new British nuke gets warm, and certainly before the first ten new UK nukes go on-line (and ten will not be enough).
And wind can also make a difference in just 2, 3 or 4 years if people will just shield their eyes from the horror.
Alan
Absolutely Alan.
Simmons said it best:
'The biggest oilfield we can find now is called conservation'.
We need every thing we can throw at this problem:
Conservation
Nukes
Wind
Tidal
Solar.
There is no single magic bullet, but some bullets have more calibre than others.
It seems that all the projections of wind power are in MW and what we need are GW.
Yet we still export more of our gas to Europe (Positive = UK > Europe)
And here's an interesting chart of UK North Sea decommisioning.
The UK is now on the 25th Seaward Licensing Round
Anyone from the industry have any expectations of any substantial discoveries which might yet turn up?
Only a few years to raise the prices enough that demand is naturally curtailed.
I bet the Brits will scale up their imports of coal to fill the gap period as old nukes get shut down and new nukes get built. Maybe they could run more coal generation in winter and use a lot more solar in summer. I'd expect by 2018 photovoltaics will be pretty cheap.
I also wonder how hard it would be to add 3-5 years to the operating life of some of their nukes.
I also wonder if they could speed up the planning period and get the nukes under construction a few years sooner.
They are planning to build more coal plants - but still claiming leadership in combating global warming of course!
There might be some extensions to nuclear plants, but the British designs were one off, and very old fashioned now, with extensions difficult.
Even allowing as much as possible for extensions, there is still a large energy gap - a lot of coal plants will have reached the end of their life in the next few years.
Solar PV is so fantastically expensive that off-shore wind would be cheaper, and comes in at the right time of year.
Solar residential thermal could have a very important part to play, but is getting very little backing - that could greatly reduce hot water bills.
France plans to install 5 million of them over the next few years - the UK is doing very little.
Dave,
Do you have a source for the cost of offshore wind as compared to nuclear? I'm curious to know.
Hi, the wind costs I took from Centrica, they guys who would order it, unfortunately the link is now gone, but you may be able to Google it.
It was reported also in 'The Telegraph', and the £66bn cost for 33GW nameplate, average hourly average energy flow 10-11GW does not include around £10bn connection costs - the capacity figures for off-shore I use are taken from the Government report I reference:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/01/27/nbook127...
Christopher Booker's Notebook - Telegraph
This is further backed by Government commissioned studies giving the cost of off-shore wind at around £1.9 million per MW installed in 2006:
http://www.renewables-advisory-board.org.uk/vBulletin/showthread.php?t=13
Offshore Wind Cost Study (ODE Ltd) - RAB Forum
However, the wind power resource in the UK does nicely follow peak load:
http://www.eci.ox.ac.uk/publications/downloads/sinden05-dtiwindreport.pdf
sinden05-dtiwindreport.pdf
The estimate of around £21bn for the equivalent in nuclear power is based upon the French design and their construction costs they are experiencing with their Finnish build, which is however the first of it's kind and uses an inexperienced Finnish workforce - they were still designing it as they were building it, and does not allow for series production- you would need around 7 of them at 1.6GW nameplate, about 1.44GW average hourly annual output to generate just over 10GW:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/money/2008/03/17/bcnbri...
British Energy shares surge into bid limelight - Telegraph
http://www.berr.gov.uk/files/file39525.pdf
file39525.pdf
Hope this helps - if you would like any more info please contact me.
BTW, in 2006 on-shore wind in the UK cost around £0.9MW installed not including most of the connection and back up costs.
EDIT: I found a link on Centrica's off-shore wind cost estimates:
http://www2.theiet.org/oncomms/sector/power/News.cfm?ObjectID=420252C2-A...
Dave,
Thanks for all this. Well, this suggests we aren't going to see as much British offshore wind as the government is claiming.
Also, is the main driver for this the EU mandate to get some high percentage of total power from renewables? If so, how is France going to meet that mandate? The French already have so much nuclear generation capacity that they probably can't meet their mandate by installing a lot of wind turbines.
As I see it mandates for renewables have to get met with electric power generation methods. The use of biomass is the only other alternative and biomass energy is going to come under increasing criticism every year forward as energy prices rise.]
One idea: The French could electrify more things and then supply the additional needed electricity using wind turbines. But for Britain the cost of offshore wind seems prohibitive. Are the French faced with a similar high cost for wind energy?
There are two main drivers - the renewables mandate does not include nuclear - see the Telegraph article I already linked to - and just about all the fossil fuel and nuclear kit we have is reaching the end of it's life.
France is also installing lots of wind energy - although the wind does not blow as hard in France as in some areas of the UK, they have lots of sites on land to put turbines, which costs around half of what off-shore does.
France has some of the best potential for biomass of any of the countries in Europe, and fair resources in the South for solar.
Any excess they will be able to export to other countries in Europe with coming energy shortages - they are building a nuclear plant to sell energy to the Brits now.
From what I gather, Centrica is NOT keen on buying wind, so inflating costs would serve their purposes to kill the idea.
A first maxim in utility planning is that the cost of no power is the highest cost of all. I fear that Britons will learn the truth of that.
Alan
I always welcome your comments and critique, Alan, but really, just focussing on the Centrica cost figures and totally ignoring the extensive UK Government figures I linked to which give the same ball-park figures doesn't really move things along - that is the point of the multiple links to different sources to support those figures.
Centrica just used similar figures to the Government figures for wind, Alan - check out the links I gave to the DTI pdf.
In 2006 around £0.9 million MW for on-shore, £1.9 million MW installed for offshore, without most of the connection costs and backup.
A quick google will show you that that is also the same ball-park figure as is used by other bodies.
In any case, Centrica don't really care what it costs - they work on a kind of cost plus basis, and just follow the Government's commitments to renewables - they don't pay for the power in the end, after all.
Here is one of the many previous wind projects Centrica is already involved in:
http://blog.businessgreen.com/2007/03/centrica_starts.html
You are correct of course that no power is the most expensive, but the costs are what they are.
It looks like what will actually happen is coal fired plants - imports may be difficult, but there are planning applications in for more open cast in the UK - they built one 50 yards from the nearest house in Wales.
Dinorwig, the largest pumped storage scheme in the UK (and Europe for that matter) is designed to restart the grid from a black start. It can go from cold to 1.7GW in two minutes. Spun up it can achieve full power in 20 seconds. However it only has 9GWh of storage, about 5 minutes of peak demand in the UK. We will need a lot more storage than that if we actually achieve the 33GW rated power of wind turbines by 2020 the government hopes for. Denmark's experience is that it is not that rare for the total wind power output across the country to drop by half in twenty minutes. Either we have to have a lot more storage or we need a lot of gas turbines on standby.
We could back pump some of the existing hydro plants but there would be enormous public resistance to a flooding anymore mountain tops and there are not that many to flood. Given that such mountains as are suitable are in Wales or Scotland and the main user of electricity is England it would risk violent reaction to try and flood them.
Our best hope is that the Severn barrage, now coming back into political favour, will be built as a two basin system. This could provide up to 50GWh per day of stored power. This amount of stored power, build for fast control so that it could act as a balancing power source, would allow the hoped for wind power to be integrated into the grid.
There are also proposals just to create tidal lagoons in the Severn, which would do a lot less ecological damage than a dam, and generate more electricity too.
They would also as you say provide very helpful load balancing functions.
The Firth of Forth may also be suitable, I understand.
http://www.foe.co.uk/cymru/english/press_releases/2004/tidal_lagoon_powe...
Friends of the Earth Cymru: Press Release: 2004: Tidal lagoon power could give Welsh economy a competitive edge by 2020
http://www.foe.co.uk/resource/briefings/severn_barrage_lagoons.pdf
severn_barrage_lagoons.pdf
A useful exercise is to figure where one wants to go, which then affects the path one takes.
Let us suppose UK electrical generation & demand 2038.
Summer 3 AM minimum, 20 GW, winter peak 60 GW (much more use of geothermal heat to replace natural gas, offsetting better insulation).
8 GW pumped storage, HV DC links to shed excess wind, etc.
28 GW nuke (refueling in summer)
1.x GW hydro
3 GW geothermal
55 GW wind
20 GW natural gas (very low capacity factor)
8 GW coal (left idle most years)
would be close to my choice,
Alan
I'm not quite sure what you are calling geothermal there, Alan.
Britain has fairly limited resources of geothermal, unless you go all the way to hot dry rock technology.
That is unless you are talking about geothermal heat pumps, which you don't really need in the British climate, the latest air heat pumps would do fine.
To give an idea of the figures at the moment, minimum electric demand is around 20GW, peak 75GW.
But you have to add natural gas burnt in combination boilers in the houses to that, which heats all but around 5 million of Britain's 24 million homes.
And then of course there is transport.
As against that efficiencies of things like insulation are very poor.
At a guess, given much better insulation and the use of things like heat pumps, and taking into account that electricity for transport is a lot more efficient than liquid fuels, at least from the fuel economy POV, you might need something between 100-150GW of power for the society, using figures appropriate to nuclear, where you would in such a society probably run them day and night, and produce hydrogen or charge up electric cars overnight for the surplus off peak.
I don't really go in for trying to sort out way ahead what the total energy mix should be - costs and availabilities and technologies can change too much - for instance, algae for fuel, possibly running on solar power and produced in the hot areas of the world would falsify any projections.
It is possible though to describe a system that we know would work at a fairly acceptable cost.
It might consist of perhaps 70-90 1.6GW reactors, around 10-30 more than France at the moment although more powerful.
That would be 'stretched' by the installation of proper insulation and air heat pumps throughout, giving you a multiplier of at least 2.6 for heating.
Wind power might be useful in the UK for peak load as it tracks well.
Other resources which might figure would include tidal power, with perhaps a 10GW resource available, depending on costs.
Hot dry rock geothermal would be useful if it proves practical in limited areas such as the South-West.
If high altitude wind proves practical then it should be so cheap that most other resources would not be worth exploiting.
In short, I would use whatever works at some sort of reasonable cost at the time.
As we have already discussed though, getting through the short term in the UK will be the really tricky part, and shortages seem inevitable. Wind turbines will help here as they have a short build time.
The Government needs to start managing energy in a statist fashion, instead of relying on laissez-faire.
It might consist of perhaps 70-90 1.6GW reactors, around 10-30 more than France at the moment although more powerful.
That would not work for the UK,
Generally speaking min load > max nuke.
France gets around this by selling power, at give away prices, all night long to it's neighbors. From memory, 18% of France's electricity is exported. The Swiss buy @ night to save hydro to sell @ peak power exports. Luxembourg buys 1 GW for pumped storage. The Italians, Germans, Spanish, Belgiums and Dutch buy French nuke at night to save on fuel costs.
Modern nukes are designed for full on or full off, and weeks in between off and on. So if UK has a summer minimum of 20 GW, they can use almost 20 GW nuke (pumped storage might be big enough to serve as spinning reserve). If they schedule refueling outages for summer, this raises the nuke limit some (perhaps 17% ? depends on refueling requirements, new nukes are designed for short refueling/maintenance, so 1/6th of the reactors off-line for refueling during minimum demand ?).
Pumped Storage is a form of demand that can be added to minimum demand, as are exports (send power to Norway & Iceland so they can do the Swiss strategy). Ireland might accept 1 GW in nightly exports (don't know).
I suspect that the ratio of min to max electrical demand in France is not as extreme as in the UK (they lack harsh winters), France has much better export markets, so the UK can never approach the French % nuclear UNLESS they have a massive pumped storage build-out.
Since the NIMBYs rule UK, there seems little hope of that.
Perhaps you can persuade the Icelanders to build the pumped storage for you ?
Best Hopes for Keeping the Lights On,
Alan
Off-shore at least it is mainly about cost, not NIMBY's, Alan.
As for peak load and so on, for the excess costs of off-shore wind it would be just as cheap to build nuclear and throw away the excess energy as to build off-shore.
In fact of course by the time the build approached anything like that level, there will be little petrol to run cars so that electric cars and equipment would need off-peak electricity, so the extremes should be less with the right price structure, and there would also be lots of time to strengthen links with the continent to spread power export - still at a fraction of the cost of off-shore wind.
I did not mean to indicate that all power would be generated by nuclear, I used the numbers of nuclear plants partly to indicate the relative size of power requirements, I would normally take the most economical (long-term) solution, whatever that might be at the time of build - I have also posted in this thread about tidal lagoons, which might provide pumped storage, and tidal turbines which may prove an effective contribution, and cheaper on-shore wind might help peak power, although on this small island space is limited in the best locations.
Locations are also limited for land pumped storage - but do please check out the links I gave to the substantial possibilities for off-shore pumped storage, which are certainly in the multi-Gigawatt range, and would additionally generate electricity by tidal power.
Low head pumped storage (such as tidal) is generally not as efficient as 100 to 450 m head pumped storage, but if that is all you have...
I do think that more pumped storage, by whatever means, is in the UK future.
Tides vary around that clock during each lunar month, which limits the viability of tidal based schemes for anything much larger than a supplemental role (I will have to find time to review).
The same forces that impel the UK towards nuke also affect Ireland, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany and Spain, All but Ireland already buy late night French nuke power, so it is an open question if the listed nations will also "Rush to Nuke" and, if not, how much surplus night UK nuke power they will buy (france will have lower transmission costs).
Perhaps Eire will massively build out on-shore wind and trade with nuke England (Wales and Scotland do not yet appear too keen, yet). But if they build their own EPR nuke in 2022, what then ?
Unfortunately, it is NOT too soon to start planning for the next 20 to 25 years. Yes, the UK is facing a medium term crisis (caused by a lack of long range planning) but a proper planning horizon TODAY is somewhere between 2028 to 2038. The edges get hazy in the distant future, but that is no reason to not plan.
Perhaps fusion will be economical in 2029 and upset plans past that date, but I think it is impossible to time the implementation of new tech, and I am adverse to depending on the Just-in-Time Technological Fairy.
Best Hopes for Proper Planning,
Alan
Most of the cost of the pumped storage is already paid for, Alan, by utilising the great tidal resources of the Severn river- you would just have to build them a bit higher to deal with wind power contributions- the problem is that the time-scales would be similar to a nuclear build and costs uncertain.
The Pentland Firth between the Orkneys and Scotland also has exceptional tidal resources, but that would need underwater turbines to tap, rather than polders.
Spain is in a rather different position to the other countries you mention, it has a lot of on-shore wind installed and plenty of mountains to build pumped storage in.
It also has good solar resources, and solar thermal is a real possibility there, although the companies involved will have to live up to their cost reduction promises.
In southern regions of Spain the main need is for cooling, not heating, which is a very different ball-game to Britain or Germany, and unlike the complicated process and long transmission lines needed to import solar power to Germany, they only need to make a bilateral agreement with Morocco and cable under a 7 mile wide straight to access huge solar resources.
In Ireland too a nuclear plant would provide an inconveniently large portion of their power - whatever they choose they are going to have to greatly strengthen transmission links to the UK.
It is the other, crowded northern countries where the case for nuclear is strongest. It looks as though most are building some minor amount (relatively) of wind power, building more coal plants and trying to persuade the French to build nuclear plants to export to them - not really a problem to export to Britain and Belgium, as they can use seawater for cooling, but it may be more difficult or at least involve longer transmission lines for Germany and the Netherlands.
At least the penny has dropped in the UK that they are going to need nuclear power, but planning remains difficult whilst they are still relying on totally unrealistic amounts of oil and gas being available.
In Ireland too a nuclear plant would provide an inconveniently large portion of their power
Doesn't Ireland have a history of them thar evil Terrorists and violent extremists?
The normal squaking is that states with violent extremists should not have nuke plants - right?
It always amazes me that some people think that states can be told if they can have nuclear reactors in the modern era, or that if they do that will stop them having nuclear weapons if they want them - the Americans tried to stop the Russians getting nuclear weapons, then the Chinese, then the Israelis, Indians, Pakistanis - none of these measures worked, and none will in future.
In the case of Ireland, the idea that America, and by extension the West, would stop the Irish having nuclear power if they wanted it just makes no sense at all - the Irish vote in America would see to that, for a start.
There seems to be a residue of colonialist thinking in common usage, which fondly imagines that 'The West' can hand out licenses for who will have nuclear power, or nuclear weapons, and who won't, when they have very little power in the matter indeed.
It always amazes me that some people think that states can be told if they can have nuclear reactors in the modern era, or that if they do that will stop them having nuclear weapons if they want them
*clap* *clap*
I look forward to your spirited defense of Iran if they end up having the fission sites bombed. Because I'm sure this site will have postings a plenty on the matter...while parts of the world would burn. (someone will have to take up the roll of 'defended of Iran' and the 'peaceful atom' program of the past)
So, how do you propose to stop them?
Nuclear bombing, or what?
Britain could up the fraction they get from nuclear by instituting dynamic pricing.
Dynamic pricing is also needed for wind and solar. Plus, dynamic pricing will provide the incentive needed to create hydro storage for electric power.
How hard would it be to develop a system that could dump electricity during a network failure so that nukes wouldn't need to go thru the days of delay for getting started up again you've noted after power failures and Scrams?
They can be built to dump steam bypassing the turbine to get the production down fast enough to stay on line supporting their own load after a sudden grid fault.
What was that it said in the Nuclear Sites graphic about 3.3 GW nuclear reactors. I havn't heard of them as articles about the proposed reactors give output figures about half that. Anybody got any information?
Two 1.65 GW EPR nukes (made by Areva),
Alan
Canals offer answer to road congestion
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2008/03/22/eacana...
I was surprised to learn at WIREC (from a Finnish Minister I believe) that 40% of intra-EU trade goes by water. Barges and coastal shipping.
I assume 40% by tonne-km.
Best Hopes for Energy Efficiency,
Alan
Kazakhstan and China have just broken ground (Jan 08 ?) on an electrified standard gauge rail link (first sections to be ~160 kph) between China and the EU. 3 days from Beijing to Berlin is the eventually goal. This bypasses the Russian Empire's choice of broad gauge.
Two routes, China-Kazakhstan-Turkmenistan-Iran-Turkey-Bulgaria and China-Kazakhstan-Russia-Ukraine-Poland.
This fast transportation will draw industry into China's interior. 100 million people have migrated from the interior to the coastal cities of China.
Add to this the Swiss conversion of truck to rail movements (see 31 billion Chf TransAlp project) and going by rail, as well as water, is the way of the future.
Alan, one of the biggest transportation systems in the country is going almost unused. The intercoastal waterway, concieved and partially completed by George Washington, traverses near my home. The IC links the East Coast US States and runs parallel to the Atlantic Ocean. Traffic on the IC in this area is almost totally limited to pleasure yachts going south in the winter and north in the summer. There is the rare sight of a barge loaded with rock or sand, but this transportation resource 'lies fallow', for the most part. Since I have spent many days boating, fishing and observing the IC, I know what goes on there. The IC is a subsidized resource for wealthy boaters...when the IC needs dredging, marker upgrades, patrolling, or other work, the bills are covered by the taxpayers. If the US is serious about lowering transportation costs, the IC would be put to good use.
The Gulf Coast InterCoastal Canal (which passes through New Orleans and has a "dog leg" section on the Mississippi River), is a major commercial artery. It is an East-West "feeder" to the Mississippi River.
The Corps once planned to link the two through Tampa Bay to Jacksonville but was defeated for environmental reasons.
I toured the Allegheny Portage Railroad that once hauled barges over the mountains. I wonder ....
http://www.nps.gov/alpo/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegheny_Portage_Railroad
Best Hopes for Energy Efficient Transportation,
Alan
Likely the old Cross Florida Barge Canal
Seemed like a good idea at the time some work was done and it's legacy endures to this day.
Pete
We might even live to see the Erie Canal/Hudson/Atlantic Link start to carry some real tonnage again!
"Clinton's Big Ditch"
'It was not until 1808 that the state legislature funded a survey for a canal that would connect to Lake Erie. Finally, on July 4, 1817, Governor Dewitt Clinton broke ground for the construction of the canal. In those early days, it was often sarcastically referred to as "Clinton's Big Ditch". When finally completed on October 26, 1825, it was the engineering marvel of its day. It included 18 aqueducts to carry the canal over ravines and rivers, and 83 locks, with a rise of 568 feet from the Hudson River to Lake Erie. It was 4 feet deep and 40 feet wide, and floated boats carrying 30 tons of freight. A ten foot wide towpath was built along the bank of the canal for horses, mules, and oxen led by a boy boat driver or "hoggee".'
http://www.eriecanal.org/
A 1989 NYT article on the Erie Canal today and a bit on plans for the future.
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=950DE7D71031F93AA2575BC0A...
Alan
Also, the number of "lockings" (one barge or boat(s) through a lock)
Cargo/Commercial: Cargo vessel traffic decreased by 33 percent, from 2,468 in 2005 to 1,658 in 2006 *
Recreational Traffic: Recreational traffic decreased by 22 percent, from 119,113 in 2005 to 92,642 in 2006 *
* June 2006 flooding reduced travel.
Here is a few big huge turbines being moved by the Erie Canal!!!
http://www.nycanaltimes.com/pages/articledetailsarch.asp?cat=55&art=203&...
I've floated portions of the original Erie, and though a beautiful marvel, it's a long shot for it to be more than a drop in the bucket for transportation.
In the original canal boats, about a third of the boat was taken up by stalls for resting draft animals. And feed.
It's construction through virgin timber inspired huge mechanical, wheeled stump pullers, among other things. And a trip to England to pilfer the latest advances in waterproof cement. Finding a way to produce it locally rather than importing slashed costs.
Today's largest US water transport system, the Missouri-Mississippi, is massively subsidized by the federal government. It's environmental costs have yet to be fully tabulated. In the context of the last 10 or 20 years, it's been at best a massive support for a few barge companies. Perhaps this will change.
Looking at a different waterborne transport system, the Snake-Columbia, until the last couple years at least, grain growers in Montana found it cheaper to self truck to Portland, OR for Asian markets. Railroad rates and timing over the Rockies, even just to Lewiston ID, were too high and variable time wise. And once over the mountains, it was much better to drive on than ship on the Snake.
Our Current Cultural is mired in a Mass Delusion that dwarfs all previous mass delusions.
In the UK, one leader wants to start dismantling the main Mechanism used to propogate the Delusion - starting with the children:
easier solutions.
1. shut off the tv when children are in the room.
2. buy a tivo or make a myth box, prefer the latter, and set it to automatically skip commercials. while preventing the kids from watching the stuff live.
Self-sufficient living In the UK
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2008/03/22/sm_sag...
The article also covers the hassles of planning permission in the UK.
Just a little history on the "Oil Crisis of 1979."
Posted for the record, as it seems be hailed here as some kind of watershed
for oil.
http://www.aliciapatterson.org/APF0403/Donovan/Donovan.html
"#
The administration stuck with its assertion of a 2 million-barrel-a-day shortage to justify price decontrol for crude oil even though it knew a key assumption behind that figure was wrong. Peter Deutsch, a Senate Judiciary Committee analyst, discovered an internal DOE paper saying that the 2 million figure depended on the assumption that "Iran will produce only enough oil for domestic consumption, about 800,000 B/D, through the first quarter of 1980." But by April, 1979, Iran was producing 4 million barrels a day. Deutsch wrote a detailed study of the shortage concluding: "Since the shortage due to Iran was not significant and at worst was only a temporary aberration in the international petroleum system…the rationale for the Carter energy plan is flawed."
#
Throughout the shortage, senior DOE officials remained ignorant of basic facts necessary for evaluating what was happening in the world oil market. On July, 16, 1979, after the U.S. gas lines had largely disappeared, Harry Bergold, assistant secretary for international affairs, admitted to a Congressional hearing that DOE still did not know what criteria the companies used to allocate oil among their subsidiaries around the world. Bergold said: "We have tried to find out…I cannot testify to what they are doing for sure." Senator J. Bennett Johnston, chairman of a Senate energy subcommittee, wrote to two high-level DOE officials to ask if companies were diverting Caribbean-refined heating oil from the U.S. to higher-priced European markets. He got contradictory answers."
Hi Mac...
Anecdotal information about the 'Oil Crisis of 1979'...
At that time I owned a marine engine shop in one of the largest marinas on the Chesapeake Bay. When gas lines were longest we received calls daily from Texaco, requesting us to take more gas and diesel. Texaco did not want to send the fuel to gas stations and were trying to 'unload' it to marinas. Since it was mid-winter and almost all boats were blocked up in storage on land we could not sell fuel. We told Texaco many times, day after day, that our tanks were full. They continued to call.
At the same time dozens of tankers were at anchorage, just south of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge, near Annapolis. These tankers were fully loaded and low in the water. They were not allowed to proceed to Baltimore to off load for weeks.
Imo, based on the anecdotal evidence above, the whole 'oil crisis' was a contrived event. Or, at any rate, it was contrived in the Maryland area. I cannot speak for other areas of the US.
Thank you, River.
"The U.S.-based companies serve on the IEA’s advisory committees under special exemptions from American antitrust laws. The theory is to prevent the companies from exchanging proprietary data and from acting in concert in their marketing strategy. But during the 1979 crisis, concerns over antitrust issues wound up hampering the IEA’s efforts to protect world oil consumers-exactly the opposite of what antitrust is supposed to accomplish.
A spokesman for Texaco, for instance, acknowledged that the company had cited antitrust concerns in declining to give IEA its corporate supply-demand forecasts during the first four months of 1979, even though other companies were supplying their own supply-demand figures. The IEA adds up individual companies’ figures to try to get an overall picture of the world oil market. So until Texaco changed its mind in May, the IEA had to operate without supply-demand forecasts from the third-largest U.S. oil company."
Same source.
I've always thought the 1979 "Crisis" was manufactured.
I just never took the time to delve into it. Strange that.
Luncheon Address by Matt Simmons on the Release of
Twilight in the Desert
Tuesday, June 14, 2005
"The background surrounding the April 1979 33-page Senate Staff Report is still
something of a mystery. Apparently, after Iran’s oil production collapsed,
something triggered Senator Frank Church, who chaired the 1974 Subcommittee
and by 1979 was Chairman on the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations once
again, to subpoena information from the Aramco owners. For reasons still
unknown, the documents the senate subcommittee obtained were deemed so
12
Page 13
sensitive that there were put under lock and key for 50 years. A compromise
about what to release to the public produced the innocuous 33 page Staff Report.
But buried in this 33-page report was knowledge that the three great oilfields of
Saudi Arabia, which produced virtually all the Arab Light and Extra Light oil,
would go into irreversible decline by the early to mid-1990s if their 1979
production rate was maintained."
Of course it was, it was manufactured by Iran, they had a revolution. Their oil production dropped from 6 million barrels a day to almost zero. Then it recovered briefly to 4 mb/d then dropped right back down to below 2 mb/d and did not recover to about 3.6 mb/d until the early 90s. See a chart of Iranian oil production here: http://www.wtrg.com/prices.htm
Of course there was also the Iran-Iraqi war that caused all Persian Gulf countries to drop production due to the "Tanker Wars" brought about by Iran. Here is OPEC and Non-OPEC production in 1979 and 1985.
............OPEC...........Non-OPEC
1979 . 30,728,000 . 31,946,000 Mb/d
1985 . 16,412,000 . 36,849,000 Mb/d
Dif ... -14,316,000 . +4,907,000 Mb/d
As you can see, OPEC production dropped by almost half. Obviously Iran, Iraq and the other OPEC nations manufactured this crisis. The production data for each nation can be found here.
http://www.eia.doe.gov/ipm/supply.html Click on spreadsheets 4.1a, 4.1b, 4.1c and 4.1d for data for each individual nation as well as "World" and "OPEC". Non-OPEC data can be derived by subtracting OPEC from World.
Ron Patterson
It is interesting that in 1979 OPEC production was 30,728,000 Mb/d...At a time that Texaco was calling me daily to ask if we could take more gas and diesel at the marina and dozens of fully loaded oil tankers were anchored in the Chesapeake Bay.
Probably just an oversight by Texaco...Obviously they ordered a lot more crude than the people waiting in the gas lines needed.
Not a mystery at all. There was a near glut of oil in 1979.
No, your just a little confused as to when the crisis actually began. The US Embassy was seized on November 4th 1979. That was the beginning of the crisis. The flow of oil into the US was not interrupted until over six weeks later and not seriously until well into 1980. There were no people standing in gas lines in the US in 1979! Your memory is perhaps a little fuzzy there River.
Data trumps all theories. -- Matt Simmons
Ron Patterson
Perhaps the people that wrote this Wiki chronology of 1979 have bad memories as well? As you can plainly see from the table below the gas lines were in Spring 1979. Btw, I do have a bad memory...comes with getting up in years. :)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1979_world_oil_market_chronology
1979 world oil market chronology
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
January: First emergency Crude Oil Buy-Sell Program allocations.
January 16: Shah leaves Iran on vacation, never to return. Bakhtiar government established by the Shah to preside until unrest subsides.
January 20: Saudi Arabia announces drastic cut in first-quarter production. 9.5 MMBD ceiling imposed. Although actual cuts never reach announced levels, spot prices of Middle East light crudes rise 36 percent.
January 20: One million Iranians march in Tehran in a show of support for the exiled Ayatollah Khomeini, fundamental Muslim leader.
February 12: Bakhtiar resigns as prime minister of Iran after losing support of the military.
March 5: Iran resumes petroleum exports.
SPRING: GASOLINE SHORTAGE/WORLD OIL GLUT. (caps mine)
March 26: OPEC makes full 14.5 percent price increase for 1979 effective on April 1. Marker crude raised to $14.56 per barrel.
May: United States Department of Energy (DOE) announces $5 per barrel entitlement to importers of heating oil. Saudi Arabia announces intention to increase direct sales and to sell less through Aramco. Both announcements send prices higher.
June 1: Phased oil price decontrol begins. Involves gradual 28 month increase of "old" oil price ceilings, and slower rate of increase of "new" oil price ceilings.
June 26-28: OPEC raises prices average of 15 percent, effective July 1.
October: Buy-Sell Program sales average more than 400,000 B/D from October 1979 through March 1980 - highest level since February 1976, due to emergency allocations.
October: Canada eliminates light crude oil exports to U.S. refiners, except for those exports required by operational constraints of pipelines.
November 4: Iran takes western hostages.
November 12: U.S. President Jimmy Carter orders cessation of Iranian imports to U.S.
November 15: Iran cancels all contracts with U.S. oil companies.
December 13: : Saudi Arabia raises marker crude price to $24 per barrel.
Just a few lines of your above post:
March 26: OPEC makes full 14.5 percent price increase for 1979 effective on April 1. Marker crude raised to $14.56 per barrel.
Nothing serious so far.
SPRING: GASOLINE SHORTAGE/WORLD OIL GLUT.
A glut, just as I said. I can't explain why there would be a gasoline shortage when the world was awash in oil. Perhaps there was some panic or hording. But obviously with a world oil glut, there was no oil crisis.
December 13: : Saudi Arabia raises marker crude price to $24 per barrel.
Now things are getting serious. In mid December, prices almost double.
Iranian production did drop 2 mb/d in 1979 but that same year OPEC and World production reached an all time high. Oil prices reached $25 a barrel in 1979 and $37 a barrel in 1980 before dropping back to $14.50 in 1986.
Ron Patterson
Your statement that there were no gas lines in 1979 was wrong. Address the issue. You are trying to avoid admitting that you were wrong, instead, introduced new data to the conversation that is irrelevant to the discussion. Here is an article and link to a Time Magazine printed 5 Feb 1979. In the article clear reference is made to the 'winter shortages of gasoline' that preceeded this Time article.
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,946222,00.html
'With this winter's sudden spate of gasoline shortages now beginning to disappear, can motorists count on a hassle-free spring and summer on the highway? Hardly. By Memorial Day or shortly thereafter, shortages may start appearing all over again.'...snip...
Ron, I saw the tankers sitting at anchor in the Chesapeake Bay every day during the time that people were sitting in gas lines. Texaco was calling us daily to take more fuel at the marina. Employees at the marina were allowed to fill up at the marina to avoid gas lines at stations. We were making light of Texaco calling us and other marina owners trying to get rid of gas and diesel stocks while people were sitting in gas lines. It is not easy to forget such an event.
River, I do not doubt that there were full tankers sitting at anchor in Chesapeake Bay. After all there was an oil glut. What the hell could anyone expect. It was perceived that there might be an oil shortage, and there was, beginning in 1980.
There was nothing in the Time article about gas lines. I was a Computer Field Service Engineer with Digital Equipment Corp. in 1979. I drove very long distances every day, from client to client. I filled up almost every day and I had no trouble, ever, anywhere. I lived in Naples, Fl. and drove to Miami or somewhere on the East Coast about two or three times a week and north to Tampa quite often as well. I simply never had any problems. I left and went to Saudi Arabia in February of 1980, so I don't know what happened after that.
I definitely remember long gas lines in 1973, 74 and 75 during the Arab Oil Embargo but nothing in 1979. (I began my job as a Field Service Engineer in 1970)However I have been wrong before. Perhaps gas was a lot tighter around D.C. than in Southern Florida. If you can come up with long lines in 79, just post them and I will admit my error.
Ron Patterson
I had been in the Rockies, Colorado and New Mexico during those years. We had a gasoline shortage in Colorado during the summer of 73 (long before any national news had any reports of problems). Once the real crises hit, the Rocky mountain region had NO problems. A lot of problems were caused by regional quotas. I knew someone who bought a nice car in California for way below cost (took a one way plane flight from the midwest and drove it back). My dad in New Jersey had stories of having to do loops on the Garden State parkway to fill up. They had a low ration limit per fillup and the trick was to buy as much as allowed, then get off at the next exit and drive back for another pass. Clearly a case of "rationing" creating waste.
yep. 73. had to look for gas after 3/4 tank on interstate going to ft. worth from ala.. had to exit once & go north to a small town!
'There was nothing in the Time article about gas lines.'
Wrong. What do you suppose this means...'With this winter's sudden spate of gasoline shortages now beginning to disappear, can motorists count on a hassle-free spring and summer on the highway? Hardly. By Memorial Day or shortly thereafter, shortages may start appearing all over again.'
Ron, your post stated in bold print 'There were no people standing in gas lines in the US in 1979' and...'Your memory is perhaps a little fuzzy there River' and...'Data trumps all theories - Matt Simmons'
Your post did not state that 'there were no gas lines where I worked in 1979'...So, let that go and address your origanal statement. If you need additional proof I will be happy to find it for you, it is not difficult. Although it seems that a riot caused by gas lines in Pa in 1979 would be enough proof for anyone. :)
You wanted a link to the gas lines of 1979. Here you go...Time Magazine, July 09, 1979...Notice the title...'And the Gas Lines Grow'
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,920445,00.html
'Just a week or two earlier, the gas lines had somehow seemed temporary. It was an irritating inconvenience to spend hours waiting for what used to be taken for granted, but somebody would eventually fix things. More gas would appear, as it had before, and all would be well. Last week it became clear that nobody was fixing things very fast. The lines got longer, and the prices went up.'...snip...
' While a gas-station owner in Freemansburg, Pa., rushed to help his bleeding wife, who had been accidentally struck by a car waiting in line, other motorists filled up their tanks and drove off without paying. In Levittown, Pa., in an outbreak originally caused by truckers demonstrating against high diesel fuel prices, some 2,000 motorists and thrill-seekers clashed with the police in three days of rioting. Police arrested nearly 200. Local officials declared a state of emergency and enforced a curfew that prohibited more than five people's getting together on the streets after 9 p.m. Pennsylvania Governor Richard Thornburgh helped restore order by bringing another 500,000 gal. of gas into the area and imposing a statewide odd-even purchase system. Said Bristol Town ship Police Chief Richard Templeton: "We're sitting on a powder keg.'...snip...
River, you are correct and I was wrong, there were gas lines in some parts of the country in 1979. I was totally unaware of that as there were no gas lines in Southern Florida. I suppose I thought everywhere else in the country was similar.
The words "lines" did not appear in your earlier Time article. It posited that "by Memorial Day" there might be shortages.
I am at a loss to explain how there could be a glut of oil and gasoline shortages at the same time. Were there gas lines when the bottom hit in 1983? I was back in the country for six weeks that year, (ARAMCO grants expats six weeks vacation every year), and I remember no gas lines whatsoever.
Ron Patterson
If memory serves, the federal government in the Seventies decreed how much gasoline was allocated to different regions, which probably resulted in some localized supply problems, with gluts in other areas.
WT, in the Time article mention is made of shortages in 'the Houston area', Pennsylvania, '90% of stations in NYC area', 'Gulf Oil Corp. instructed 350 of its 800 company-owned stations to provide gas in 26 states east of the Rockies on Sundays starting July 1', Conn., Calafornia, 'In Tennessee, truckers making deliveries were still the target of vandals and snipers', 'Red meat has been held up by a truck shortage in Midwestern beef states like Iowa, Nebraska and Minnesota. In Detroit, Frederick & Herrud, a meat processor, was forced to shut down its hog-slaughtering facility and lay off 900 workers because no hogs were arriving. Normally the plant butchers 16,000 hogs a week. Other meat-plant workers were laid off in Iowa, Nebraska and Oklahoma'.
Some of the above clips are refering to a trucking strike that was initiated over high diesel prices. Fruit was allowed to rot in the fields in Fl and Cal because of a lack of trucks for transport...and livestock was not being delivered to processing plants...for a short while.
Of course good ol Scoop Jackson never missed an opportunity to get his name in print...this time for alternative energy (synthetic fuel).
'Senator Henry (Scoop) Jackson has his own provision for synthetic fuels in his comprehensive energy bill, and the Senate is in almost as much of a hurry as the House. Jackson's bill is co-sponsored by all but five of the 18 members of the Energy Committee and has broad backing in the full Senate. Says Jackson: "We're going to get a bill out and pass it before the August recess commences, even if we have to meet at 5 in the morning.'
If the US Gov wanted to see what would happen when fuel ran short they certainly found out.
Ron, here is a chronology from Wiki for the years 1970 - 1997...
I see no mention of gas lines in '83 and I don't recall any (by then I was living in Florida)...It seems that since Fl is heavily dependent on tourisim they managed to get gas when other states could not...which is one more oddity that makes me think that a real shortage of gas/diesel never happened.
About the 1979 shortage of gas/diesel (actually there had been gas lines since around Xmas 1978)...I do believe that it was contrived for there is no other good explanation for all the gas lines at the same time there were loaded tankers sitting at anchor waiting to unload (a glut of oil as you put it)...and, at least two oil companies that supplied marinas, Texaco and Esso, were calling their marinas to take more gas and diesel during weather cold enough that ice was in the rivers of the northern Chesapeake Bay. Obviously, the oil companies knew that no pleasure boats were moving and that the oyster boats, that worked through the winter, took a small amount of fuel compared to the big yachts. Perhaps you have another explanation for all these events and observations?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronology_of_world_oil_market_events_%2819...
1983
Oil glut takes hold. Demand falls as a result of conservation, use of other fuels and recession. OPEC agrees to limit overall output to 17.5 MMB/D. OPEC agrees to individual output quotas and cuts prices by $5 to $29 per barrel.
April: Iraq increases missile attacks on Iran.
July 20-30: Iran moves into northern Iraq. Casualties top 13,800 in ten days.
July 26: U.S. threatens action to preserve navigation in Persian Gulf.
July-August : Heavy fighting and casualties in Iran-Iraq war.
October: Iran attacks northern Iraq, threatening Kirkuk-Ceyhan Oil Pipeline.
An oil glut in 1983! That comes as a shocker. Oil production is down 15% from its peak in 1979 and there is a glut? Wow, I was just not paying attention back then.
I guess that proves one thing, that we can get by on a lot less oil and still have plenty of oil without a crisis. Could that happen now. Well I doubt it. We could drop perhaps 5%, or thereabouts, without a serious crisis but I doubt we could go much further than that.
But right now we have dropped very little, if any, and prices are at all time record highs. Though we have been on a plateau for almost four years. I suppose it is that demand has risen so much and production has not. That has drove prices up.
There is one other thing I get from this story. That is a perceived oil shortage is worse than the actual shortage. Public opinion of what might happen is far worse than what actually happens. I don't know, I just don't know. It still does not make any sense. How could there be a shortage when oil production hits an all time high and how could there be a glut when oil production drops 15%? I cannot explain it so I will not even try. But I would welcome others opinions on this strange irony.
Ron Patterson
Ron, I know that you love to reject "conspiracy" theories out of hand but collusion in the marketplace does occur. That's why there are laws against it even if they are not always successfully enforced. Further, there is evidence that there was collusion in the gasoline market in parts of the US during this time. That evidence is not rock solid but none of us are attempting to investigate this at a level equivalent to a federal prosecutor.
The oil companies are not totally evil bad guys but they are not always white knights either. Oil companies are made up of human beings with all their foibles, limitations, and follies. The circumstantial evidence pretty strongly suggests that this was a manufactured crisis (in 1979 at least) and the only ones capable of manufacturing that crisis were the oil companies, since, as you yourself note, OPEC was producing all out at that point.
Later shortages were pretty clearly linked to downturns in OPEC production, for which you have also provided the data (many thanks there again). But you honestly should consider whether the IOCs acted in 1979 in a manner which manufactured a gasoline crisis out of whole cloth or not. The evidence strongly suggests, at least for that particular crisis, that the IOCs did it themselves.
Ron, I know that you love to reject "conspiracy" theories out of hand but collusion in the marketplace does occur.
But as soon as anyone knows it stops being a conspiracy in Ron's head - thus 'shown collusion' is not a conspiracy.
"I am at a loss to explain how there could be a glut of oil and gasoline shortages at the same time. "
Irish Potato Famine, while Ireland's governors exported wheat.
Sometimes, Supply and Demand aren't allowed to meet and equalize their uncomfortable pressures.
Bob
I wonder if 1979 wasn't some sort of 'experiment' to determine the feasibility of weaning us off oil imports? The shortages of the early 70s had given a little preview, and by that time the US had clearly peaked and was increasingly dependent on imported oil. The trade deficit was bound to affect the US economy eventually.
Remember, Carter's sweater speech was in 1979. Before 1979 there was probably residual hope of new discoveries, or of the sort of alternatives we've been discussing here. People were installing solar panels or windmills, and I recall a sort of cottage industry fermenting manure and converting VW beetles to run on biogas. Some hippie communes were into recycling old junk to build innovative houses and stuff.
There were editorial page cartoons with Uncle Sam the alcoholic or drug addict, and it was always a black liquid he was imbibing / injecting.
Then in 1980 Reagan won the election ...
Then in 1980 Reagan won the election ...
That explains River's obsevations of Texaco's actions right there.
It was an artificial crisis engineered towards a political aim by the oil companies.
Thus,
US Gasoline Shortage/World Oil Glut
Makes perfect sense now, doesn't it?
Might be interesting to see a red state / blue state analysis of the areas which experienced shortages.
As I recall, the price control regs had an unfortunate mathematical wrinkle.
Any oil company with significant domestic production that imported more than the average % of oil, paid a financial penalty on each marginal barrel.
So, an oil company with "excess" imports would be advised (from a financial POV) to hold them offshore till the company produced enough oil domestically to match the average import %.
Such are the wonders of gov't regulation,
Alan
I believe there were bizarre rules governing the price that could be charged for different types of oil. Old wells could only charge some predetermined (and low) price. New wells, and imports I think would go at full price. That was supposed to protect the consumers, but you can just imagine the disincentives for production, as well as scope to play games.
Darwinian,
You are wrong.
Cheech and Chong's Next Movie was filmed in 1979 and has a scene where they are siphoning gas out of the gas station's tow truck into a trash can to avoid sitting in those lines you say didn't exist in 1979.
What matters is that oil price control was ended. If oil prices had been kept artificially low US oil consumption would have burgeoned, as happens in China, Saudi and other places where price controls are persued. It was the right thing to do for whatever reason it was done.
Please, you didn't say that.
"It was the right thing to do for whatever reason it was done."
or, the ends justifies the means.
I am not interested in the 'right or wrong' of what happened. However, I do believe that history should be written to reflect what really happened. Otherwise, no sound factual record remains for future generations to base decisions upon...Not that there has been a rush by politicians to reflect on the historical record prior to making decisions. But, here is hoping for wiser politicians in the future.
I don't know all the details, but this is the key point I think:
June 1: Phased oil price decontrol begins. Involves gradual 28 month increase of "old" oil price ceilings, and slower rate of increase of "new" oil price ceilings.
There were quite a few price controls during the 1970s, starting with Nixon and continuing through the Carter years.
In the late 1970s, the dollar was dropping in value quickly. The price of oil was going up because of dollar devaluation, not a shortage. All the production figures show very high production at that time. Measured in gold, a "non-devaluable currency", the price of oil was falling.
However, price controls made it impossible to do business. There may have been controls for gasoline, but not for marine fuel, so refiners were anxious to sell to marine users but not to gas stations.
The combination of price controls and inflation is very toxic. Even in an inflation, people can adjust prices to a level at which business is done. However, if this adjustment process is prevented by the government, eventually suppliers drop out.
When Paul Volcker stopped the dollar decline in the early 1980s, the physical glut became apparent.
'There may have been controls for gasoline, but not for marine fuel, so refiners were anxious to sell to maring users but not to gas stations.'
I don't believe this assumption is correct. In 1979 there was no difference in formulation of marine fuel and gas station fuel. Marina fuel tanks were filled from the same tanker trucks that delivered to gas stations for vehicles. Marinas sold fuel for a few cents more per gallon than gas stations but it was due to the nature of thier business and fuel sales. Marinas sell (almost all) fuel only during the boating season, which is during the warmer months, but marinas pay taxes, operating expenses, maintenence, mortgages, etc, year round.
The same applied to FBOs (fixed base operators) at small, local airports. I had an aircraft at a small airport in Edgewater, Md., and was paying a few cents more per gallon than the filling station price.
In the case of marinas and FBOs, they both have a more or less captive audience...if you will. Few people carried fuel to their aircraft or yachts in gas cans. Instead, they purchased it from the place that they kept their yacht or aircraft. No one in their right mind would attempt to carry 400-600, or more, gallons of fuel to thier yacht in 5 gallon cans. Since boat slips were scarce no one would risk losing their slip by purchasing gas at a gas station and carrying it to their yacht...marina owners and FBOs take a dim view of such practice, not to mention it is against fire codes and various laws governing fuel tax for natural resources, etc.
S. Africa - one model system for studying Catabolic Collapse-In-Progress.
We see it all here - "theory" put into practice. The Law of Receding Horizons, rationing by "the market" and by government, people crying "no fair" (literally).
Coming to a community near you soon ???
Coming to a country near you:
http://www.citizen.co.za/index/article.aspx?pDesc=60560,1,22
"The risk of power shedding is said to remain high until Thursday.
"No load shedding will be implemented over the Easter weekend as large business will be closed and therefore the demand for electricity will be reduced.
In a statement released by Eskom yesterday, chief officer of networks and customer service Erica Johnson said Eskom was using gas-powered turbines to minimise shedding.
“We appeal to all electricity consumers to reduce their demand by 10%,” she said.
Johannesburg City Power spokesman Louis Pieterse said: “We are facing a national capacity challenge, where every household and business has a responsibility to reduce their demand.”
Isn't it amazing? We should have a dedicated link to evolving Case Studies.
Post a color coded Map of "Catabolism-in-Progress" so we can click on a city or region and see the current status and their progression down the Energy Slope.
Have links catagorized by topics like utilities, load shedding/brown/black outs, fuel shortages, food prices, municipalworkers/teachers strikes, water and sewage problems, government proposals to deal with various problems (aka "comics section") ...etc, etc
This fellow updates his site in the hood of what you propose ...
over here http://energyshortage.org/
Thanks Paal. That's exactly what I was looking for.
I noticed the flag for fuel problems in Nebraska on his map (although the link appears dead). They've been having some problems out west the last couple years with diesel supplies and it is causing competition between agri-business, trucking and coal mining operations out west.
Ooops. I'll remove it then. It's a challenge to keep external links up to date. News organizations don't seem to care about web based archival records. One of the worst offenders is The Post (a Pakistani news source) which removes their linked story in 24 hours. Too bad because they have great reporting.
That's a great sight Piggly. I'll explore it more later... I understand completely about the lack of archiving by many sources leading to dead links.
Keep up the great work.
more on S. Africa's descent from Kunstler's Grunt column:
---------------
A different Case Study, at a different point on the down-slope (keep an eye on those roads and bridges in your area...):
Five reasons to start worrying
"The Big Fall is coming"
'the Fed, other central bankers worldwide, and cool heads at the financial institutions had the collective wit to stave off a meltdown in the global financial system.'
These are the same poeple that got us into this mess over a period of years, with financial leveraging (less Greenspan). 'Getting us out' is going to be a drawn out process, if it can be accomplished at all. De-leveraging is not going to be pretty or painless. See chart at link...
http://suddendebt.blogspot.com/
...snip...'Without Greenspan's negative real interest rates after 2000, the cycle would have probably turned down (red line), avoiding the bubble of 2002-06. Based on this hypothesis, there have been almost 3 million "extra" homes sold (black line minus red line), creating a fundamental housing demand deficit that won't go away even if credit becomes cheap again.
Let's summarize: riskier borrowers, low quality collateral concentrated on real estate, questionable appraisals for market prices and "low, low rates". Is the Fed turning itself into a sub-prime lender? If I were a bank examiner, I would want to have a quiet word with Mr. Chairman about his lending practices.'...snip...
I sent him this email:
It was a pretty good article, but your analysis of oil was way off. It’s apparent you haven’t done much research on peak oil, or that you don’t believe in the theory. Oil could drop 30%? That’s stretching it. Have you seen this chart?
(Chart not shown, it showed the plateau of production).
In Jan 2002, the price of a bbl was $20. It has gone up 500% in six years! Do you really think that huge escalation does not have a simple market reason? What made that price go up? Isn’t it obvious? Supply is no longer sufficient. If oil was still $20, there wouldn’t be enough oil to go round. Stop and think about that one, it’s the most important point I’m going to make.
Oil production has been on a plateau since 2005. Even if the world spirals into a global recession, we aren’t going to suddenly be swimming in excess oil. The fact is we have been in demand destruction since 2002, when the price shot up to $30. In other words, supply has stopped growing and the world is bidding against each other for what is available. This bidding war will NEVER be eliminated because of excess supply. From now on, there will be bidding and demand destruction. The fact is, the true demand for oil is well over 90 mbd, but only at cheap prices. However, cheap prices will never again manifest – I think that is clear to everyone.
Now, we could see a short-term correction this year and see prices back in the 80s (from fear of a recession). But even if this occurs, it will be very short-lived. The bottom line is that oil is heading much higher, reaching $200 sometime in 2011 (maybe in 2010). Thus, we will be seeing steady increases in prices from now on – global recession or not. This will happen for the simple reason that oil is an incredibly dense energy source and is utilized in 95% of transportation fuel. Transportation is not going to slow very much globally this year and next. And by the end of 2009, global oil production will have started downward. Traders will know this.
Now, what does this mean to Canada? It means you will prosper! Commodity prices (especially food) are headed higher and oil and gas through the roof. Why are you scaring Canadians when you are sitting on all of those resources? Canada has food and resources and a strong currency. You are going to do fine. Haven’t you noticed all of the mining activity going on, or that the climate in Western Canada is becoming milder – extending the crop season? Canadians should be smiling like Chesire cats, not pouting.
It is America that is screwed. We are headed into a depression – you go that one right. But, Canada will find a way to avoid one. You will have a recession, but it will be much milder than what we experience.
Newager
Credit crunch: it's all over!
No, not really. But why are we trusting the bankers who got us into this mess to sort it out?
Homes at risk as banks seek more security for credit card debt
Generating electrcity from rain
We like to generate electricity from rain here in Central Texas:
http://www.lcra.org/energy/power/renewable_energy/hydroelectric.html
Then there's this other way to get electricity from water, but good luck capturing any useful energy from it: (Kelvin dropper starts ~44:30 into 50 minute lecture)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQX8I9ZWtPQ&feature=related
Air Force prod aids coal-to-fuel plans
"We're going to be burning fossil fuels for a long time, and there's three times as much coal in the ground as there are oil reserves," said Air Force Assistant Secretary William Anderson. "Guess what? We're going to burn coal."
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080322/ap_on_bi_ge/military_coal;_ylt=An79E...
Edit:
The military as a partner:
"The Air Force wants to build at its Malmstrom base in central Montana the first piece of what it hopes will be a nationwide network of facilities"
"And by offering itself as a partner in the Malmstrom plant, the Air Force hopes to prod Wall Street investors — nervous over coal's role in climate change — to sink money into similar plants nationwide."
Coal to liquids is another source of 'Other Fuels' that will cost much more than extracting oil out of the ground, yet represents one more way of remaining dependent on fossil fuels. Trouble is the estimates of how much more CO2 can be spewed into the atmosphere before we pass the tipping point of (climate change) no return, will certainly be surpassed if we scale up the use of coal to produce fuel.
With desperate measures like coal to liquids seeming like good ideas to some, isn't it obvious we are at peak or just past peak, and thus sufficiantly motivated to take the initiative to find newer, cleaner ways of propelling our transportation. Surely our collective modern civilization hasn't come this far to simply give up on a sustainable future by using coal to make fuel, right?
http://www.ers.usda.gov/Publications/EIB34/#2008-3-21
http://opencrs.com/document/RS22826
VIETNAM
While the Vietnamese oil production forecast called for increased production, the rate of oil consumption growth might increase as fast. The scenario for a net gain in exports does not appear in this model, even though the nation's production was set to rise considerably.
Your post is a good reminder for the problems facing Australia - Vietnam is their main sources of oil imports.
See the third graph down:
-----------------------
http://anz.theoildrum.com/node/3657#more
Looking at Rembrandt's pdf below, on page 17, that uptick in production predicted in the graph above after 2006 did not happen. Instead production continued to decline, to currently just over 300k bpd. Assuming the consumption graph held, that must mean they are closing in on zero net exports already. A pretty spectacular demonstration of ELM given that consumption was only half of production just 3-4 years ago.
http://www.peakoil.nl/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/2008_march_oilwatch_mon...
Lead article from Business Week this week. The article never mentions peak oil. ExxonMobil is spending more in dividends and stock buybacks than exploration than reinvesting in its business -that is its problem. ExxonMobil says it can't find good places to invest its money.
Why ExxonMobil Won't Produce More
Even with prices at the pump near all-time highs, ExxonMobil isn't projecting increased oil production. Here's why
ExxonMobil Advertisement in New York Times, June 2, 2006:
Note that Texas & the North Sea--developed by private companies, with virtually no restrictions on drilling, using the best available technology--have declined at -4%/year and -4.5%/year respectively since peaking (C+C).
'"It has always been a challenge to grow volumes when you are working off of a base as large as ours,"
strikes me as the equivalent of mumbling.
I have the same problem: finding good places to invest my money.
A topic from yesterday and a coincidence...
I mentioned yesterday that I had cancelled home owners insurance on three properties. This seemed to strike a cord in quite a few posters. Perhaps a read of the article below will give TOD posters a view to why some in Florida are deciding to self insure. Today in the Daytona Beach News Journal there is a large piece in the financial section about the subject of home insurance in Florida, quite a coincidence, imo. Citizens is the state run 'insurer of last resort' and Fl is attempting to get out of the insuracne biz before another big hurricane bankrupts the state. Florida's budget is about $63 Billion and a large storm, like Andrew, could cause $30 Billion or more in claims. Since home owners insurance in hurricane prone areas is a different ball of worms than in other areas of the country I have posted a link to the article and quoted a couple of lines below...If this is too off-topic delete it, I have a thick skin. :)
http://www.news-journalonline.com/NewsJournalOnline/Business/Headlines/b...
'Takeout companies replacing Citizens
By BARRY FLYNN
Business Writer
DAYTONA BEACH -- Jean Minerd knows a bit about homeowners' insurance: Her big, 100-year-old Beach Street house took a beating during the 2004 hurricanes, and the ensuing agony gave her an unwanted education.
So, when she was notified her insurance coverage could be switched from Citizens Property Insurance Corp. to a small, privately owned company, Minerd might have had reason to be reluctant. If she did not formally object, the notification letter told her, the change would be automatic.'...snip...
'Is such a handoff to a private-sector insurer -- what the industry and the OIR call a "takeout" -- a good thing?'...snip...
'But many agents have resisted takeouts, some arguing that many of the companies lined up to take over tens of thousands of policies may not be financially up to the risks involved. At Brown & Brown Inc., a national insurance agency based in Daytona Beach, Jim W. Henderson, vice chairman and chief operating officer, said his company normally does not write insurance policies for companies rated less than A by A.M. Best, the premier rating agency. However, it has made exceptions, he said.'...snip...
Had some insight yesterday to the insurance business. The models for success in the industry rely on size, distribution and the 'running in front of the train' stategy for fund investment. There's an inflation factor in there of course.
I have to believe that millions of people coming after me in the upcoming economy will opt for plowing lots of excess capital into insuring against future catastropies while they may presumably be facing plenty of the immediate kind routinely.
Methinks everybody doing business today is still pretty mired in the growth paradigm. After studying the prospects regarding long term health care products I also made the (possibly fatefull) decision to self insure.
Can anyone point me to data on the amount of energy (of all sorts, but particularly oil-based) it takes to clean up and rebuild after a natural disaster?
I'm going to call FEMA on Monday but if anyone had links to reports made by people outside of FEMA, I would appreciate it.
Please post here as my guess is that this information would be interesting to the readers of TOD.
-André
Saved by the Sun
Nova/PBS 24 April 20-8 8:00PM EDT
I noticed over the last month or so lots of more generally aired documenataries on energy and climate. How about a side bar place to list them as they come up - wordwide of course.
Can be used to direct friends, family, the sheeple to watch and - hopefully - become more aware.
Things like "Climate Code Red" and "Plan B 3.0" can be a bit much for many to read and assimilate.
Pete
Sheesh! Those that live by links will die by links... like little sausages all in a row (and media run)... any chance here like threadbot says: for some wise words from TOD contributors? You know, make a statement of ones own and then, if needs be, back that up with all those little links. I think the cart is pulling the horse here. I could be wrong but that is open for discussion ... dig?:)
In the temporary absence of Leanan, TOD contributors have been asked to post links of the type which would normally have been picked up by Leanan for inclusion in the drumbeat header. Or are you complaining that Leanan's normal drumbeat links aren't of interest either?
It's a pity though there isn't a way for these user posted links to be aggregated (as is the case with Leanan's) rather than spread through the drumbeat.
Okay, but in that absence can't us mice play a bit?
Actually I am more interested in what you have to say and think than in a quote by a third party. Curious that?
More Actually:
Actually I seldom read the posted news articles as I prefer to follow my own interests and bring that point of view (fortunately or unfortunately, as you may see it:). I agree that it would be nicer here to separate the links from the comments but it might even be better if Leanan instead of working hard to bring articles would post a pure subject line to speak to. It looks like the commenter's here are quite able to dig up all the links anyone could wish for and like I say I would rather hear you straight on rather than filtered through a particular media article.
I'm not attempting to say what other people should do/post, but I prefer reading snippets of articles about actual events (load shedding, new oil finds, etc) in the world to reading theorizing (even well-thought out theorizing) as by its very nature most theorizing is incorrect. (I'm slowly coming to terms with the fact my latest theory at work is just not right, so I'm not saying "I'm cleverer than the posters here" but making a point about theories vs observations.) Of course even "factual" reports can be biased (is that Brazilian offshore oilfield really as big as stated?) but I tend to use them to calibrate my view of whats happening. Heck, I freely admit I don't know squat about geology and don't have an informed opinion whether near-term geological peak oil is what's happening, but the oil price indicates something is happening in the world. Whether it's pdeflation
So by all means keep making comments, but factual links are also very welcome.
They can. Use the first post in the thread as the aggregate. Take the various links and copy them into that one post.
Es fini!
Cheers
Truckers slowing down to save fuel
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080322/ap_on_re_us/slower_truckers_2;_ylt=A...
"Fuel accounts for about a quarter of carriers' operating costs, and now is surpassing labor as the biggest expense for some carriers, said Tiffany Wlazlowski, a spokeswoman for the Arlington, Va.-based American Trucking Associations."
You mean to say they're now obeying the speed laws?
Yes, and perhaps we'll all be safer on the roads as a consequence.
But what really struck me was that for so many years-- at least in the West -- fuel has been labor's slave and now it appears labor is becoming fuel's slave.
That doesn't bode well for truckers' future incomes. And how long before it begins to climb further up the employment chain?
Yes, and perhaps we'll all be safer on the roads as a consequence.
Absolutely. Part of the 'need' for all this running around in individual 5000 lb. capsules is based on safety required by speed. Walking ,cycling and EV's become a lot more practical when we all are just forced to slow down. As they say speed does not kill but 'Relative speed does kill'
I hope that those of us who are witnessing the demise of the trucking and airline industries will be just as willing to realize that the private car as we know it will be following the same pattern very soon. (I am amazed at how we at TOD can still be carrying on a running dialogue about speed limits for the private car)
Slow truck 'trains', urban rail on current roadways, intense car and truck trip pooling by individuals, EV and slow vehicle lanes on freeways are things that may be needed as we pass from a (2001) 25 barrel a week earning potential down to 2 and 1/2 or less in a couple of years.
I had seen that and was thinking of posting it. Now I don't need to. I've been thinking for a while that they really ought to do that, but I never thought they would have the good sense to actually do it. So we are seeing some conservation effects from higher prices. Both seaborne and landborne slowdowns. Unfortunately airliners can't save fuel by slowing down (at least I think not).
If trucks could double up on trailers, and go much slower (say 50mph) that would save a lot!
Hello Enemy
Looks like they can.
A 3 to 4% reduction to a jets cruising speed results in a 6 tp 7% in fuel consumption
Recall reading some articles addressing the 'green' takeoff and approach patterns too saving a lot off fuel by going gradual. Airline pilots are in effect standing on the gas during cruise and hitting the flaps hard on descents a lot now in order to keep schedules and clear airports quickly and wasting a ton of fuel!
Think the airlines and trucking are both going to be changed forever in the next couple of years owing to both taking off around the same area on the fractioning tower at $4 a gallon. At 5, 6, 10 we'll be looking at 'significant contraction' to say the least.
Some of the trucking folks I know say fuel is about half of their operating costs and wish it were only a quarter. John
Anecdotal evidence of recession...
Went to a little party last night to see off a friend who is traveling. One person there works as a truck driver, has no work and none foreseeable. This is after having steady work up until last month. Another knows a local body shop whose business has dropped to almost nil. They are just getting the poor folks who want you to bang out the dent enough to allow the car to go (metaphor for the fed and the economy?). Another knows a car repair garage whose business has also dropped to nil. Altogether, an uneasy air about the employment situation. This kind of thing can snowball pretty fast.
Anecdotal evidence of shifting fortunes (transfer of wealth in progress) in recessions:
A friend operates a company that makes nails. His industry is getting nailed (pun intended) but his company has picked up contracts and has more business now than ever because of so many others going out of business and their former customers flocking to his company.
Sendoilplease, Does your friend know where I can find a store that sells US made garden spades, I have been looking and looking and it seems like China must be the gardening implement manufacturing center of the world... at least for the moment. (possible local growth investment area?:)
Mrs. Ydnurg, have you tried Lehman's? here's a link:
http://www.lehmans.com/index.jsp
Thanks Dunewalker, but the best I can do at Lehmans in the spade department is this item :O
Funnily enough I know a landscape gardener who's always lecturing me on spades. Little did I realise I might pass any of the info on (me and outdoor work don't go together!).
There are high quality European manufacturers which he swears by. Don't know if you can get them in the states but here's a couple of links to check.
http://www.fredshed.co.uk/forksandspades.htm
http://www.bulldogtools.co.uk
Thanks for the information undertow, I will follow those up. I have been really truly looking for a quality shovel with good steel.
But, to current actuality, the point of my comment was to find out if there were really and truly no US manufacturing of that most basic implement the shovel or spade. It troubled me greatly that when the SHTF there would be nothing to shovel it with ... but then again it is not shovels or spades we will need, it will be umbrellas....anyone know if they are manufactured in the USA?
Gemplers (http://www.gemplers.com/product/G42000/Jackson-Round-Point-Shovel-Straig... ) sells USA made shovels.
They are usually industrial-grade so are more expensive then what you will find at your usual local store.
Way to go Bakedplanet, a winner there! Now how about those umbrellas?:)
http://www.qpitools.com/
http://www.technologyreview.com/Energy/20448/?nlid=955
Cheap, Efficient Thermoelectrics
Nanomaterials could be used for lower-emission cars and solar panels.
I've been waiting for decent thermoelectric (or thermoacoustic) generators. Unfortunately this is research. No numbers, such as cost, amount of power per unit area, or efficiency are given. If we had cheap thermoelectric at reasonable efficiency, all sorts of waste heat could be exploited. The existing thermoelectric products are mainly used for cooling applications like portable automobile refrigerators, and computer chip cooling.
This was from March 12th. Didn't see any mention of it here yet though.
US Soybean, Wheat Stockpiles Dwindling-USDA
Hello Ericy,
Thxs for the info. A few weeks ago, the topdog of POT said if the entire planet doesn't have record harvests--the Big Hurt is inevitable. I might add that if NPK & seeds are not there in sufficient quantities to synchronize with the planting seasonality: it will only make things worse going forward, even if we avoid droughts and frosts. My prior I/O-NPK postings possibly indicate how bad things are in reality.
As posted before: just sitting in the nightly darkness with food in your belly is pure luxury compared to starvation. Hopefully, North Americans will realize this long before they reach for their machetes.
Bob Shaw in Phx,Az Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
Hopefully, North Americans will realize this long before they reach for their machetes.
the 24th is the last day for the 50% off made in China Machetes at Harbor freight! For under $3, you have the tool to go after the tall wood! A bargin!
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1204127200482&pagename=JPost%...
H 2 Go
Researchers Conclude Average Farm Cost of Switchgrass for Ethanol Is About $0.49/Gallon
http://www.greencarcongress.com/2008/03/researchers-con.html
Great!
Is this the solution to the problem of corn ethanol causing doubling of some food prices?
Now just add in the cost to transport the switchgrass, the cost to convert it to ethanol (with nat gas at $10/1000cu-ft), the cost to transport that ethanol to consumers, and the capital cost of the plant amortized over ten years, then tell me if this ethanol is competitive with $3.50/gal gas.
Clean Energy: It's Getting Affordable
http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/mar2008/tc20080314_194178...
amen.
A note to Engineer-Poet:
I think "a discord of trolls" has a better rhythm to it than "an irritation of trolls".
If any of you are regular JHK readers, he has just posted a new entry today instead of Monday.
Black Swans Everywhere
Yet another good read - two days early !!
Enjoy
Nice imagery, Jim, however I do not think the "players" will allow The Street to fail. They will keep changing the rules and stacking the deck until someone calls their bullsh*t. Those that could call it have too much to lose themselves, so they let it continue.
JHK has been predicting imminent doom for years now.
I think he's right about the doom, but the timescale will be more along the lines of JMG's catabolic collapse. In other words, there's still time to start an Etrade account.
you know the old saying.. you only have to be right once.
Hello TODers,
http://www.cattlenetwork.com/content.asp?contentid=207427
------------------------
Fertilizer Forecast 2008 - Prices Still Climbing!
...Some expert observers of the fertilizer market have estimated that there may be another 20 percent increase in price by spring 2008.
-----------------------------------
If DAP is $1,0000/ton in some markets now [currently $1100 in Vietnam], a $200 increase is breathtaking.
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/bizchina/2008-03/22/content_6558234.htm
-------------------------
Severe drought threatens wheat and rapeseed production
(Xinhua) Updated: 2008-03-22 16:17
...Farming material prices have been climbing, with seed and fertilizer prices rising 10 percent in February. Some provinces even reported lack of fertilizer supply caused by disrupted transportation and manufacturing of southern fertilizer producers during the snow havoc.
----------------------------------
Please read the entire short link. Have you hugged your bag of NPK today?
More bad news on the price and availability of sulphur [Don't take your tapwater for granted!]:
http://www.brenhambanner.com/articles/2008/03/22/news/news01.txt
------------------------------------
City facing skyrocketing costs to treat water supply
...The main culprit of the price increases, Rau said, has been sulfuric acid, a component of many of the chemicals used in water treatment.
“As sulfuric acid prices increase, so does the products that contain this ingredient. The U.S. has also seen a shortage in supply of sulfuric acid,” he said. “The U.S. has imported the majority of sulfuric acid from China in the past, but recently China has slowed the trade of sulfuric acid to the U.S. because its own demand is greater than what China can produce for both the U.S. and itself.”
--------------------------------------
Do I need to remind of the irony that melted sulphur looks just like freshly spilled blood? Recall my recent posting whereby Iran sold sulphur for $666/ton.
Bob Shaw in Phx,Az Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
Bob, if the US mandated scrubbers on all the coal fired power plants in the US, would the sulpher collected be enough to off-set the loss of sulpher from China?
I hope every Chinese family gets a sudden urge to run out and buy plastic salad-shooters and the like. China will then slow the trade in salad-shooters and America can lower the trade deficit. :)
Rape-seed...Conjurs up all sorts of strange images in my head. Perhaps we could have it re-named Consensual-seed or ______? fill in suggested name of choice.
Well, I finally figured out what the Viet Nam war was all about. They are competing for OUR fertilizer and Johnson was aware this would happen, way back in the early sixties.
Hello River,
"Consensual-seed"--> LOL! I like that!
Thxs for responding. I wish I knew the answers to your questions, but much revelant market detail on NPK & sulphur is inside subscription-only 'market reports' for BigBucks$. I can't afford to go there. Best I can do is google like hell for the data-tibits they release periodically.
In Canada most varieties of rapeseed are known by the acronym "canola". CANadian Oil, Low Acid. I suppose it sounds better than "rapeseed". My Saskatchewan-born parents complain that they can't find canola-based margarine in Kentucky. They don't like the taste or texture of the soy based margarines, and butter doesn't spread as nicely.
It's amazing how fast this sulphur shortage developed. In 03 I was buying 80 lb bags essentially for shipping and bagging costs. Also recall small mountains of granular just dumped in the bush off Alberta's AlCan in the 90's. I suppose it was waste from gas processing, but not sure.
Hello Doug Fir,
Yep, I'm amazed too, especially how the sulphur price can vary trememdously from one area to the next [my guess is the shipping costs and potential HazMat concern].
A good example is maybe New Zealand, an 18 X multiplier increase in a year [maybe a bizarre example is a better description]:
http://www.stuff.co.nz/4425363a23399.html
--------------------------------------------
Farmers brace for steep rise in fertiliser prices
05 March 2008
Diammonium Phosphate, or DAP, has broken through the $US1000 a tonne barrier, a 400% increase since 1999.
The price of sulphur last year was $US50 a tonne it's now trading at $US900.
Mourits said the increases would easily add $100 to the per tonne price of superphosphate.
-------------------------------------------
Hello TODers,
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/23/business/23how.html?ref=business
--------------------------------
What Created This Monster?
...Even though Mr. Gross, 63, is a market veteran who has lived through the collapse of other banks and brokerage firms, the 1987 stock market crash, and the near meltdown of the Long-Term Capital Management hedge fund a decade ago, he says the current crisis feels different — in both size and significance.
The Federal Reserve not only taken has action unprecedented since the Great Depression — by lending money directly to major investment banks — but also has put taxpayers on the hook for billions of dollars in questionable trades these same bankers made when the good times were rolling.
--------------------------------
IMO, a good read, but Stoneleigh and Ilargi were well ahead of the trend some time ago!
Indeed! It must be about time for a spring financial round-up surely?
In the words of James
Happy Birthday TOD!