Thanks

Nice work, btw.

@ nth. If you're reading, PO & GW are not "beliefs, because they are theories" . The broader scientific community has already ambraced these events as FACTS.

Please let me know as I don't have a clue to the answer.

Let me speculate a little bit. Since I am from Eastern Europe, I've seen this many times and I think I know what it is. 1.5 mln bpd missing? What's the problem really? These countries are full of people officially earning $200/month who are driving BMW's to their cottages. Most likely this oil is simply stolen or unaccounted one way or the other - somewhere down the pipeline some people are earning good money to shut their eyes for the oil which is being sent with overnight trains to China or Kazahstan (to be reexported within some very clever and tricky schema) or, in a refined form is simply drained down who knows where by who knows whom. Now if you think that such a yelling discrepancy should be ringing someones bells you would be wrong again. Even those that are not corrupted at the upper level know everything about it and also know they can not possibly fight it.

[a minor point: the TOD image linked to your blog and not the .png file]

What you call "Missing barrels" corresponds neatly with "Product exports" which you have just 2 cells below. The "missing barrels" are simply the input for the refinaries for products that go for exports.

Production=Internal consumption + Crude export + Product export.

I read some of your Thats it I'm out piece - so was that written by you or Roger?  At any rate at 4500 words - a bit long to read in a oner- so I copied it for future reference.

Now returning to your table here.  Would you like to explain what you see going on.  Bringing product exports into the equation - obviously crucial - are you saying these have been overlooked before?

And whats all the stuff with BP?  And 1347, 5374 5093 1702 etc appearing all over the table.  Sorry, I may be in moron mode here - some explanation please.

And you were asking questions about the very near future - not sure if those were dirceted at me or not.  I have three comments about our near future:

1.  Our politicians will say anything on climate and energy to get re-elected.
   
2.  Our lives will probably continue as before for a fair while yet - whilst poor folks and poor countries all over the world plunge into energy poverty
   
3.  Our markets and energy supplies are IMO metastable - may be knocked over, with huge consequences, by the actions of one person?

http://www.energyinst.org.uk/index.cfm?PageID=1106

Now, all our politiciancs support expansion of all airports in the UK - even the guys who claim to be green - all in the interest of future HC based expansion of our economy.  I've tried to convey reasonable arguments to these people - no luck so far though.

factlet from World Watch Institute:

The World Bank reports that biofuel industries require about 100 times more workers per unit of energy produced than the fossil fuel industry. The ethanol industry is credited with providing more than 200,000 jobs in the United States and half a million direct jobs in Brazil.

http://www.worldwatch.org/node/4081

What is a `distributor'?  A company I suppose, pardon my ignorance?  The biggest buyer and thus hopefully seller?  

By definition it will be the biggest company active in this area, probably Shell (but what do I know, that was just a guess from Europe..both publicity and some press articles stress their commitment, see link below about the Biopact)

The interesting thing would be to know what they buy from where and what happens next...

http://biopact.com/2006/11/shell-and-codexis-to-collaborate-on.html

In the mean time, new coal plants that don't sequester carbon should be banned or at least put in moratorium status until this technology can be implemented.

A 15 to 20% premium for IGCC seems like a bargain.  But what would be the premium, including sequestration minus the economic value of any carbon sold.

If CO2 is used to increase recovery rates, would that additional oil represent an additional co2 burden that, otherwise would not occur?

I agree that, regardless, we still need a carbon trading scheme within the context of a co2 cap with yearly reductions until we reach at least a 60% reduction in co2.

On a related note, I see politicians and others proposing things like 25% renewable energy by a certain date, say 2025. Well, that sounds cool, except the efficacy of that approach depends upon the mix of renewables, their EROEI,  their net emissions and the total quantity of energy consumption that the 25% relates to.  If energy consumption increases at a certain rate, then at some point the 25% renewable figure just means we are running in place.

When we see politicians propose setting a renewable energy percentage, we need to tell them that this needs to be done within the context of a decreasing cap. Otherwise, we will largely be engaging in a political exercise that does not necessarily do anything meaningful with respect to energy consumption or global warming.

I suspect recent oil prices are a market anomaly due to the fact contracts expire today and traders either need to dispose of the contract or make arrangement for delivery.

If you are playing the commodities markets from home and are unable to make room for 50,000 bbls in the garage then you exit the contract on whatever terms you can arrange.

The result is a downward blip in prices.

Cheers!

The input energy is 1200MW / 0.40 (coal PP efficienty) = 3000 MW gross thermal input from coal.

So we use 3 GW of coal to get 7 GW of oil or we have 133% energy gain. Still makes sense much more than ethanol or CTL. If we used CTL at 60% efficiency we would be getting 1.8 GW diesel out, or almost 4 times less energy.

In addition we can have wind or nuclear generate the electricity, elimitating the CO2 emissions for the energy inputs.

http://egj.lib.uidaho.edu/egj09/youngqu1.html

Shale Oil

The production of oil from oil shale has been attempted at various times for nearly 100 years. So far, no venture has proved successful. One problem is that there is no oil in oil shale. It is a material called kerogen. The shale has to be mined, transported, heated to about 900 degrees F, and have hydrogen added to the kerogen to make it flow. The shale pops like popcorn when heated so the resulting volume of shale after the kerogen is taken out is larger than when it was first mined. The disposal problem is large. Net energy recovery would be low at best. It also takes several barrels of water to produce one barrel of oil. The largest shale oil deposits in the world are in the Colorado Plateau, a markedly water poor region. So far shale oil is, as the saying goes: "The fuel of the future and always will be." Fleay (1995) states: "Shale oil is like a mirage that retreats as it is approached." Shale oil will not replace oil.

This will contribute a great deal to the Alan's plan for moving goods transportation to rail. Which on the other hand will save a lot of oil and will greatly reduce traffic and road wear which will additionaly save a lot of oil etc.etc.

The positive effects are so huge that if we had a sane leadership we'd start doing it starting from tomorrow.

The plant in the article burns 100 tons an hour to generate 250 MW, so a mile long train would provide about 85 hours of electricity production.

A 1,400 MW generating plant near here burns 550 tons an hour and would burn up a mile-long train load of coal in a bit over 15 hours.

From WSJ: New Home-Building Activity Falls to Lowest Level in 6 Years

It still has alot more room to go, however: take a look at housing unit completions and units still under construction. They are still very near all time records, i.e. supply is still coming in and adds to inventory at a time when sales are also going down. Care to guess what will happen to prices?

I suspect real estate will be the dotcom crash of this era.

Housing Free Fall Turning into Meltdown...2007 Recession Ahead

<snip>
And even at these low levels of permits and housing starts the housing sector is nowhere near its bottom. In previous housing recessions, housing start fells as much as 40% to 50% from their peak; so, with starts now being only 27% down, the housing bust has still a very long and ugly way downward to go. And lower permits today mean lower housing starts ahead, and lower starts mean lower construction and lower construction means much lower construction jobs; expect over 800K jobs to be lost in housing in the next year.
<snip>

So, the housing recession is now becoming a construction recession; and the construction recession is now turning into a clear auto and manufacturing recession; and the manufacturing recession will soon turn into a retail recession as squeezed households - facing falling home prices and rising mortgage servicing costs - sharply contract their rate of consumption. As I have predicted since July a recession in 2007 (as early as Q1 or at the latest by Q2) is now highly likely to occur. Expect the Fed to slash the Fed Funds rate as early as January and expect this Fed easing to fail to prevent the 2007 recession as the glut homes, autos, consumer durables will make the demand for these totally insensitive to changes in interest rates. The Fed easing in 2001 failed to prevent the 2001 recession and the Fed easing in 2007 will also fail to prevent the 2007 recession.  Also expect this sucker rally in equity to continue for a while into the end of 2006 as expectations of a Fed easing will lead to the delusional hope that such easing will prevent the 2007 recession. But once the signals of a recession are clear to all by the beginning of 2007 expect, as in previous US recessions, for the stock market to experience a sharp contraction; as detailed in my research work, in the typical US recession the S&P500 has fallen by an average 28%.  

http://www.rgemonitor.com/blog/roubini

What can be done starting right now assuming that we place a moratorium on new coal plants that will not have sequestration?

Permanent carbon dioxide storage in deep-sea sediments
Kurt Zenz House, Daniel P. Schrag, Charles F. Harvey, and Klaus S. Lackner
Proceedings of the National Academy of Scientists
PNAS 2006;103;12291-12295

Stabilizing the concentration of atmospheric CO2 may require
storing enormous quantities of captured anthropogenic CO2 in
near-permanent geologic reservoirs. Because of the subsurface
temperature profile of terrestrial storage sites, CO2 stored in these
reservoirs is buoyant. As a result, a portion of the injected CO2 can
escape if the reservoir is not appropriately sealed. We show that
injecting CO2 into deep-sea sediments <3,000-m water depth and
a few hundred meters of sediment provides permanent geologic
storage even with large geomechanical perturbations. At the high
pressures and low temperatures common in deep-sea sediments,
CO2 resides in its liquid phase and can be denser than the overlying
pore fluid, causing the injected CO2 to be gravitationally stable.
Additionally, CO2 hydrate formation will impede the flow of CO2(l)
and serve as a second cap on the system. The evolution of the CO2
plume is described qualitatively from the injection to the formation
of CO2 hydrates and finally to the dilution of the CO2(aq) solution
by diffusion. If calcareous sediments are chosen, then the dissolution
of carbonate host rock by the CO2(aq) solution will slightly
increase porosity, which may cause large increases in permeability.
Karst formation, however, is unlikely because total dissolution is
limited to only a few percent of the rock volume. The total CO2
storage capacity within the 200-mile economic zone of the U.S.
coastline is enormous, capable of storing thousands of years of
current U.S. CO2 emissions.

Unless there are plenty of petrochemicals available at a reasonable cost to produce fertilizers, pesticides, insecticides,mildecides and other sprays to protect against various virus borne diseases, such as Asian Soybean Rust,insects such as corn borer, corn ear worm,army worms,etc there will be almost NO crops to speak of in the domestic market view.

Its going to have to be organic all the way , like it or not in the future. Break out those hoes boys.

Especially note the optimistic future of the hydrogen vehicle energy economy of 2050. All is well.

The outcome was as described in the RR blockquote. Gas prices did not rise; there was also no gas available anywhere on the island and no plans to import any.

The legislation was repealed.

Cheers!

In all fairness to Big Oil, though, the Democrats are obviously pandering to the high level of antipathy among the general public toward Big Oil and will milk this issue for all it's worth.  

 There appears to be no sane middle ground: the Republicans are in bed with Big Oil; the Democrats want to paint Big Oil as the Prince of Darkness.

The question that remains to be answered is this: In the long run, will Big Oil be part of the solution or part of the problem? For me, the answer is by no means obvious.

 If Big oil continues to insist that we really don't have an imminent and serious supply problem and that global warming is just a lot of nonsense stirred up by a bunch of granola-crunching nervous-nellies, then they will be part of the problem. But if they start investing their enormous capital in alternative energy (excluding ethanol), then they could be part of the solution.  However, my gut feel tells me that pressure from Wall Street will force them to continue the status quo as long as they possibly can.

The only thing I can be certain of is that it is a very fluid situation.

NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- The dollar fell against the euro and yen in late morning trade Friday on market talk that a major hedge fund is in trouble.

"Rumors of a major U.S. hedge fund collapse appear to be behind the dollar's latest dip," said Brian Dolan, director of research at Forex.com, a division of Gain Capital.

Fifty Million Farmers
by Richard Heinberg

http://www.energybulletin.net/22584.html

Farmer jmy in Ca

Anything close ??

What is the FFA ?

That is, the Ancient Greeks and Romans never used wheelbarrows. The Romans in particular were great engineers, but never seem to have hit upon this very simple idea.

The answer proposed by some historians (e.g. De St Croix) is that a slave-based system didn't encourage this kind of innovation - So the slave wears himself out and dies, big whoop... Where's that Thracian gone?

Moral: When the US really collapses, no one's going to need wheelbarrows anymore...

For starts, there are two carrier groups, the Marine carriers have some fighters and helicopters but are not full air groups:

US-Led Military Thrust Focuses Heavily on Broad Naval Deployment

October 30, 2006, 11:53 AM (GMT+02:00)

Hundreds of US and allied war ships foregathered in the strategic seas of the Middle East and India in the last days of October 2006 for two primary missions: To prepare for a US-led military strike against Iran which has stepped up its uranium enrichment program with a second centrifuge project - undeterred by the prospect of UN sanctions; and measures to fend off palpable al Qaeda threats to oil targets.
DEBKAfile's military sources provide details of the massive deployments:
1. A large-scale US-Indian sea exercise called Malabar 06 is in progress off the Indian coast of Goa, ending Nov. 5. The American vessels taking part are the USS Boxer carrier, the USS Bunker Hill guided missile battle cruiser, the guided missile destroyer USS Howard and the USS Benfold , as well as the Los Angeles-class nuclear attack submarine Providence and the Canadian guided missile frigate HMCS Ottawa .

Indian maritime might is displayed with its warships like INS Beas , INS Mysore , INS Shakti , INS Ganga , tanking ship INS Gharial , submarine INS Shankush and Coast Guard ship CGS Samar
Malabar also involves the landing of large number of soldiers ashore, ahead of the Indian acquisition of the massive amphibious USS Trenton transport dock which can carry six helicopters and about a 1000 soldiers.
Our Tehran sources report that last Thursday, Oct. 26, Iranian officials were seriously rattled by a rumor that an Iranian spy plane had located the USS Boxer heading for the Persian Gulf. It prompted fears of an imminent American military assault to lift Republican prospects in the coming US midterm elections of Nov. 7. In any case, the Iranians suspect that at the end of the joint US-Indian exercise in the Arabian Sea, Boxer will veer west and head into the Persian Gulf. There would then be four US air carriers with task forces parked opposite Iranian shores, including the USS Enterprise Strike Group, the USS Iwo Jima Expeditionary Strike Group and the USS Eisenhower Carrier Strike Group, which are already in place.
According to the intelligence reaching Iran, the Boxer and its escorts carry 850 Marines who have just spent months in special training for operations on offshore oil rigs and platforms.
2. American, Italy, France, Britain, Australia, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait are taking part in an exercise practicing the interception of ships carrying nuclear materials or components for use in advanced weapons. The exercise opposite Bahrain is the first to be held in the Persian Gulf under the three-year old proliferation security initiative. It applications could be translated equally into the enforcement of sanctions against North Korea, which conducted its first nuclear test on Oct. 9, or Iran.
On Oct. 27, Robert Joseph, the US undersecretary of state for arms control remarked: "From Iranian news reports we know the exercise got the attention of Iran." But rather than climbing down, Tehran referred two days later to the war games as "adventurous" and placed its armed forces on a high alert which encompassed the joint naval units of the military and Revolutionary Guards in the Persian Gulf, while the Revolutionary Guards, the Iranian army, navy and air force were placed on "yellow" alert, one level short of full war.
Also Oct. 29, , supreme ruler Ayatollah Ali Khamenei replaced Iran's air force chief, Karim Qavami with Brig Gen Capt Ahmad Miqani, on the recommendation of the Revolutionary Guards commander.
DEBKAfile's Iran sources report that Khamenei did not approve of Qavami's admiration for America's military capabilities - especially the US air force's advanced aircraft and equipment. Qavami was wont to speak out at general staff meetings in favor of procuring a new air fleet the better to stand up to a possible US attack. His successor follows the supreme ruler unquestioningly and has complete faith in the ability
3. Saudi Arabia did not join the multinational Bahrain exercise, but instead mustered its entire navy and all its special forces for deployment in dense defensive array around the biggest oil terminal in the world, at Ras Tanura. Riyadh acted in response to tangible intelligence that al Qaeda is preparing to attack its oil installations.
Warnings have intensified in recent days of impending al Qaeda attacks on the oil fields, oil ports, oil tankers and oil fields of Saudi Arabia and the Arabian oil emirates. One threat specifically targets the Bahraini offices and staff of the Benin Republic's Societe Togolaise de Gaz and Societe Bengaz S.A.
It is not clear exactly why al Qaeda is targeting this African-owned oil company in particular. In addition, the US embassy in Riyadh has warned Americans operating in the Gulf region to stay clear of all oil installations, especially in Saudi Arabia. Another pointed alert covers Western residential compounds in Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries, specifying American expatriates as al Qaeda targets. Saudi security forces are standing guard at these compounds which were fatally attacked in November exactly three years ago.
4. The fourth major naval concentration is deployed in the Red Sea along Saudi Arabia's west coast. The oil kingdom has placed its military and fleet at their highest level of preparedness for Al Qaeda-instigated terrorist attacks along this coast, particularly at the ports of Jeddah and Yanbu.
DEBKAfile's counter-terror sources report: That the Saudis have by and large switched their defenses against al Qaeda to coastal targets indicates the receipt of intelligence input of a new local sea base established by al Qaeda, which enables the jihadist group to stretch its capabilities for assaulting oil and Western shore targets from the sea. This base might be located on the shore of a Gulf nation, somewhere in the Arabian Sea or in the Horn of Africa.

What exactly is agreeable to you? Thank God you are here. We've been looking for a solution.

We have to find ways to use less power.  When I say 'Have to', that can be earlier by choice, and some will continue to straggle into that camp and learn new habits, devise new systems, and the rest will 'have to' do it because the energy just isn't there to be had as it was before.

Of course educating each other about it is useless.. if we continue to fail to do it.  Some have tried, but we'll just keep trying, no matter how depressing it is for people to hear it, delivered as it is alonside the endless dieting advice, and the 'Kill your TV' advice, and the 'learn more about your not-too-stellar candidates' advice, etc.  Yeah, it's a dreary and unsexy set of possible solutions, next to watching more 'Desperate Housewives', but too bad.  You can leave it to the UberNerds like Gore to try to get it out there.  Have some cocoa, get a warm bath.

As my brother said.. "You never told me you can't communicate.."

Or from Chad's failed 'Realistic Self-help system'
"Forget the power of positive thinking.  It doesn't work, and it never will."

  Let's make darned sure we don't end up just 'handing them practically two entire undergoverned nations' that are in enough turmoil that these extremists can safely implant and regrow their operations.

  And above all, we have to do everything possible not to give the broader Muslim world any reason to sympathise with these 'underdogs'..

'Islamic militancy' is a bullshit construct anyway. In fact, the US actually invented it, through support of the madrassas in its effort to create lunatics who would go fight the Russians in Afghanistan.

Finally, these 'Islamic militants' are in the long and painful process of defeating the US in Iraq and Afghanistan as we speak. You're already 'confronting' them, and it ain't working. Give up and go home. You'll do it one way or another. Do it now. Save treasure, save blood. You'll need both.

(Don't take my word for it. See William Lind.)

He could have learned more just reading TOD.

Those behind NAFTA may suddenly want to exclude Mexico from NAFTA - but seek a closer relationship to Canada as its oil 'sands' and other energy sources become more valuable.