DrumBeat: May 17, 2006
Posted by threadbot on May 17, 2006 - 9:05am
Now for some wise words from the readers of The Oil Drum...
“To be thrown upon one's own resources, is to be cast into the very lap of fortune; for our faculties then undergo a development and display an energy of which they were previously unsusceptible.”
—Benjamin Franklin
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http://www.xecu.net/thorn/PO/May16-2006-PO.html
He was on CSPAN before 4pm, the last ones were always late at night. Maybe more members & staff will be watching in the day time.
Despite the war, life was pretty civilized back then. People relied heavily on trains for longer trips and bicycles for shorter ones. Due to gas rationing, car trips were special occassions--unless of course you were on official business. Most importantly, people had time for other people instead of wasting their days away on solitary electronic distractions.
I can see us reverting back to the lifestyle portrayed in this series within the next ten years, if the worst case predictions come true.
I give Foyle's War a rating of 4.5 out of 5 stars.
"Every time I see an adult on a bicycle, I no longer despair for the future of the human race."
--H. G. Wells, 1904
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0324197/
It's scary in way that horror films cannot be, because it centers on disorientation and uncertainty.
I saw that film at a film festival, and it was one of the more difficult ones that I have seen. A number of people walked out in the middle as I recall. Disorienting is a good way to put it.
I have seen other works by this director (la Pianist - The Piano Teacher), which was also rather disturbing, but in a very different way.
Also, based on today's prices I assume there was good news on gas inventory?
Let them bring it up, in the form of high heating or gasoline costs. If you start, it sounds like proselytizing.
Never use the term "peak oil." It either introduces something they don't know, which you have to explain anyway, or they have heard it and think it's one of those weird online conspiracy things.
Tell them prices are high because of supply and demand--the amont of oil being produced can't keep up with the quickly rising worldwide demand, particularly from China. They understand S&D, so you'll have no trouble there.
Then hit them with a fixating stat: The world uses 85 million barrels of oil per day. That's old news to everyone here, but when non-energy geeks hear it for the first time it stops most of them dead in their tracks.
Then tell them oil production has been declining in the US48 since 1970, and mention other exporting countries that are seeing big drops. This is where they get the wide-eyed look.
Finally, tell them that this isn't really old news--some geologist guy named Hubbert predicted the US48peak in 1956.
If they're still breathing, tell them they can find more information on TOD, EB, etc.
Since last fall after talking to my brother about how much oil we use world wide per day he would hear the number and yet nothing would register in his face. So after some thinking I gave him an analogy of how much oil we use on a world basis and the rate we use it per day. I use over the road tanker trucks which haul between 7 to 9,000 gallons (I use 8,000 gal) and a 5 lane wide freeway.
So you're standing on a bridge over a 5 lane wide freeway with tanker trucks rolling by you at 60MPH. 5 trucks abreast and nose to tail in each lane as far as you can see in both directions. Roughly one set of 5 trucks going by per second. That is how much oil we use world wide every second of every minute of every hour, night and day, of each month during the year. And next year due to growth we need to add another lane for some more trucks.
84,000,000 mb/d
3,528,000,000 gal/d (42 gal / barrel)
147,000,000 gal/hr
2,450,000 gal/min
40,833 gal/sec
8,000 gal/truck
5.1 trucks per second
60 MPH = 88 feet/sec
He looked a little sick by the end but since he is my brother I had to push him further by asking if we should talk about coal or natural gas or any commodities. Shut up I think was his reply. I am always stunned by the shear volume and velocity that 6.5 billion of us on this planet use each and every day.
Very cool idea I never thought about a PhotoShop pic. I can see the vision in my head but to see it in a pic/poster would be even more sobering. I can down load pics from my camera from there on I do not have the time or skill to PhotoShop it. If you do go for it if you have the time and let me know. My brothers reaction would be priceless! JC
That is, when talking to most people, the opinion that "there is plenty of oil" typically comes up pretty soon. I ask them if they think there is an infinite amount.
If they truly believe that, I will never convince them of anything. But usually with a little prodding people will grudgingly admit that there must be some limit.
From here it is easy to conclude that we will start running out sometime. The response is often along the lines of "Yeah, but that is so long from now it doesn't matter."
How long is that? Even the most riduculous forecast, anyone they can mention (USGS, the Saudis, oil companies themselves), agree there is not much more that 50 years of oil left, prehaps 100 (obviously that is a crass statement, assuming an impossible amount of recoverable oil and ignoring all sorts of physical issues, but it is sufficient for our purposes here).
So is 50 years a long time?
That is in the (current expected) lifetime of many of us. Easily in that of our children. Very possibly, our grandchildren won't even be out of high school in 50 years. Your parents probably remember 50 years ago. 50 years is not long at all.
This make it more tangible. Even the using the farthest out, most pie-in-the-sky projections, we will "run out of oil" so soon you could be around see the day. After that we will have none. Nothing. No cars, no planes, nothing at all. And people we know and love, our kids, perhaps even us, will be dealing with it.
Most people will at least stop for a second here.
Then you go into why the extreme projection are likely way off (big fields peaking all around the world already). And how things like ANWR are so tiny as to not make much difference (85 million bpd vs perhaps 1).
And the ancedote about Hubbert predicting the peak of US oil is usually pretty good. I find many people don't realize that US oil production has been decreasing for almost 40 years.
I never tell newbies that one day the oil will run out. I do tell them that it will become so expensive we'll have to find other solutions, which I believe is accurate.
I definitely would never tell them "no cars, no planes, nothing at all." No electric cars? No prop planes running on ethanol, biodiesel, or CTL fuel? I don't think that's even close to being a reasonable prediction, and it only makes the peak oilers sound like frustrated Y2K-ers who are still upset that nothing bad happened on 1/1/2000.
I think the key is to lead newbies to the facts in as non-threatening a way as possible, and then walk them back from their knee-jerk leap into extreme pessimism. If you hit them with the "sky is falling" stuff, even after going through most of the facts, you'll lose most of 'em instantly.
Once that bridge is crossed, you can much more freely talk about what to do about it. This is where it gets lively. I have managed to get most of my coworkers Peak Oil Aware, and some have really taken to it (cutting driving, lowering thermostats, installing a rainwater system in one case, etc).
Saying "no nothing" is extreme, and not what I believe. I am sorry if I lead you to believe I was predicting that. But it accurately underlines how dependendent on oil our current situation is (in western, and western-aspiring, societies). To a large extent, there is very little we are comfortable with today that will eventually have to be rethought (electric cars or what have you).
Then the notion that each nation is an aggregate of all of its small fields and thus its national production follows the same pattern.
Then, logically, the earth is the aggregate of the nations that produce oil.
So it follows pretty well for many people that the easy oil under pressure that flows the fastest, is less viscous etc.. is the first produced. What follows is slower, harder, lower quality.
With that understood as groundwork, the details of Saudi ala Simmons, Cantarell decline, North Sea, US peak, etc help locate us in the historical moment we're in.
That has been my method anyway...
Matt, DC
I went to school on a tram(streetcar) powered by electricity from a coal fired power station, there were diesel trucks and some diesel buses but a lot of commerce was delivered by horse drawn vehicles, Laundry, green grocery, bread, milk, coal, post and hardware were brought to your door by horse drawn traffic. There were also steam lorries (trucks) which were coal fired. They were quiet and surprisingly fast.
It was possible to travel by steam train to just about anywhere in the UK and there was a lot of waiting in line to book tickets and then to board the train. you were exceptionally lucky if you gat a seat.
We kept warm with coal fires which had a back boiler for hot water and a side oven for baking, or we could cook on a gas stove fuelled by gas made from coal at the gasworks which every town had.
Lighting was by electricity 1 X 60 watt bulb in a living room was thought adequate. But there were a lot of houses which had gas lighting which hissed and burned with a greenish glow It was paid for with a coin in a meter so when the light started to go dim there was a hunt for small change
lot of people cycled and had allotmants, a bit of ground rented to you at a nominal sum by the municipal athourities.
for the purpose of growing produce, also people kept ducks, or chickens or even a pig if they had room.
The air was filthy in a coal society. Thousands of domestic fires. locomatives and factory chimneys all belching out smoke caused fogs, lung disorders, and blackened buildings.
there was always a smell of sulpher in the air and the sun shone weakly through the haze.
Most things were rationed, there was very little protein or fat but diet wise people were healther than before the war or since. Obesity was not a problem.
The Overseas Activities of China's National Oil Companies: Rationale and Outlook
Xin Ma and Philip Andrews‐Speed
Abstract:
The rapid expansion of the overseas activities of China's national oil companies (NOCs) has been driven by the needs of both government and NOCs, and this partnership has provoked negative reactions in some other oil importing countries. One goal the government and companies share is to acquire overseas production of oil and gas. In the late 1990s China's government worked closely with the NOCs to gain access to projects of strategic importance. Since 2002 the link between the government and the NOCs has loosened perceptively, at least in those countries which lack a strategic significance. The NOCs are behaving more like private sector companies, but still have much to learn, especially with respect to the assessment and evaluation of risk. In the absence of a domestic crisis or a series of commercial failures, it is almost certain that China's NOCs will continue their overseas expansion. Attempts to obstruct this spread may be counter‐productive. Partnership rather than confrontation will prove to be more constructive.
Depending on the source, we're all supposed to have from 3 days (US Gov) to 3 months supply of food and water available in emergencies.
I know this sounds very doomer, but I'm not even talking about Peak Oil!
Yup, it's time for another mild panic over H5N1 avian flu, this time courtesy of Indonesia. Another "cluster" has popped up, this one affecting a family of 8 (or more/less, depending on new source).
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4988788.stm
and the ever wonderful Flu Wiki:
http://www.fluwikie2.com/pmwiki.php?n=Forum.SuspectedBFClustersInIndonesia6
(linked to latest page of their discussion)
What's worrying to me, at least, is the very "Mayor from Jaws" attitude the Indonesian authorities seem to be having. From the flu wiki linked above, sufferers have been allowed to walk free from hospital and tracking of invididuals has been almost non existent.
Ah well, I guess stocking up is good practice for the more depressing Peak Oil scenarios...
Valete!
I wonder how much this came into play last time? There is a paper at NBER that concludes that the stagflation of the 70s could have been due to easy money in the 60s. The argument was that the easy money allowed people to buy gas guzzling cars and move to big houses in the suburbs. That greatly increased fuel consumption, which set us up for problems as the US went over peak. If we did have a housing "bubble" in the 60s/early 70s, that might also help explain the difficulty the fed had in dealing with rising inflation. We certainly had a lot of house building at that time.
I would guess we're somewhere between 1972 and 1976 at this point. The worst of the oil price spikes was in 79-80. If we say that we're basically at 1976, then 2010 corresponds to 1980. Of course, ASPO expects all liquid fuels peak around 2010, right?
Energy and Money
Inflation is not only determined by the supply of goods available relative to the supply of money to buy them, but also
the demand for the currency in which goods are priced relative to the supply of that currency. It can be hard to tell which factor is primarily driving prices.
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We have plenty of oil. But we're running out of cheap oil and there are no cheap alternatives.
...gee,at least their country has an energy policy...
But the list of countries who are more modern and better off than the US is a long one, IMO, despite the general sense of Americans that "it's the best place on God's green earth". So it goes.
- The necessity for a fission power ramp immediately to cover the gap to the start of the fusion roll out in 30 years, especially on our densely populated island. He suggested that fission was safer, both in terms of production and consistency, than any other method. Lovelock discussed something to the effect that the annual production of high level nuclear waste is a cube a few meters on a side; this, he suggested, was a much lesser evil than the effects of the annual CO2 emissions which, if frozen, would yield a mountain 1 mile high and 12 miles in circumference at it's base. He alluded to a possible imminent statement by the government on the subject but didn't know what it would say. Sure enough Tony Blair obliged him this morning. The professor suggested that the onerous conditions placed on nuclear power would have to be relaxed - I imagine to reduce the lead time to completion (10-15 years?)
- He is still against wind power (in the UK context) which he sees as a dangerous distraction, His reasoning was due to the number of turbines needed, the intermittency of power production and, due to climate change, both the change in prevailing wind direction (from westerly to north and easterly) and diminishing average velocities.
- Lovelock described recent fusion developments as more hopeful than are being reported. He was much more confident that the '30 years to go' meme was actually accurate this time. He came to this opinion after visits to the current experimental generation and discussions with their scientists :)
- He has become more pessimistic on global warming since his book was published. He explicitly stated this was due to new research at Hadley he had viewed and had recently become involved with (in an administrative sense, bringing together different disciplines; the various research groups apparently don't seem to talk to one another despite being on the same campus!). An 8 degree warming was inevitable and soon ('within the lifetimes of most of the people in this room' - 8 degrees at temperate latitudes and 5 degrees at the tropics). This appears to be a shortening of his expected time frame from 100 years, in his book, to about 50 now. Lovelock was open to 'short term technological fixes', such as allowing higher sulfur content aviation fuel, to buy time as long as they are not used to defer preparation.
- Lovelock was cynical of global political solutions being sufficiently prescient or far reaching to do any good - a view echoed by most of those asking questions. He suggested we must act nationally to prepare for flooding, migration and energy disruption, particularly in London and the fertile farm land in East Anglia.
- Lovelock became most animated when describing what he termed the two worst examples of mass hysteria in the later part of the 20th Century: Chernobyl and the death of Princess Diana - He described most things being said about Chernobyl as 'lies and propaganda'. (his main stated evidence being the WHO reports detailing what he described as surprisingly small long term effects and mortality due to the accident). I got the impression from the audience that this was the most contentious part of the discussion.
- When asked what we should be requesting of our politicians he described what a close friend and 'one of the most influential advises to the Chinese government on global warming' was saying: China is probably the best appraised and understanding of all governments on global warming (!!) China is doing what it can but says it was fearful that a single step backwards on its developmental path would lead to revolt. Lovelock suggested that if this was the best that a command economy could do, it would be difficult to imagine democratically elected politicians doing any better.
Please note that all of the above represents my recollection of yesterdays talk. Since I did not take any notes, and my memory is like swiss cheese, please bear in mind that I could easily have misquoted and/or misinterpreted what he said.
Sure the vast ramp-up of fission power is politically impossible, though.
Could someone inform us of the safe packing density of nuclear fuel? This "few meters on a side" kind of statement must surely understate the limits of safely packing this stuff... it is "hot" both radiologically and thermally isn't it?
It's also interesting the way he tries to quantify the CO2 emissions... as this is the kind of volume (order of magnitude) the sequestration people are trying to achieve - and I suspect they would see it as an achievment!
plank, was there no mention of demand reduction or changes in behaviour - or does his cycnicism extend to "the masses"?
"safe packing density of spent nuclear fuel"
Not including that portion rained on other countries as munitions... and granted this occurs at the front of the nuclear fuel cycle.
It depends how long it's had to cool and whether it's stored in air or borated water. I'd love to save some folks the hassle and offer to store some of it in my backyard, in dry casks. That is, if I get to design the casks; I've got some ideas for passively cooling the cask in ways which would let me generate steam to run an engine, and if that didn't work I'd still have free heat and hot water for years on end.
The neutrons (after a sufficient dose) make materials brittle is that right?
Given that (some) spacecraft are powered by similar emmissions why is this not feasable here? Just not worth the effort? -ve EROI? And if there is sufficient heat for steam why not some other heat engine (Stirlings)? Same deal?
The amount of energy from spent fuel is a tiny fraction of the output of the same fuel in a chain reaction. Some of the elements of the spent fuel are worth mining for space probes and the like (e.g. Pu-238 for RTGs) but the raw fuel and its required shielding is too bulky for most purposes.
I wouldn't try running a Stirling off this because the required high-side temperatures are too great. Filling a a sealed cask of spent fuel with dry nitrogen and putting it inside insulation to hold the heat would do for small uses.
And I do mean small. The table I have of reactor afterheat says that the output of spent fuel after 1 year of full-power operation is down to 0.015% of full-power output after one year of cooling. Making 5 kW of heat from year-old fuel that's been burned for 2 years would require fuel elements capable of at least 16 megawatts.
So just store it on site for a year and then ship it in a truck to Nevada. Seriously, I worry far more about biological pollution of food and chemical pollution of water than I do about nuclear waste. Air pollution isn't so great either.
And global warming is worse. Too late, though. We'd better concentrate on stuff we can fix like pollution and just get used to the weather changing on us.
Demand reduction was not mentioned explicitly. He did seem to assume that fossil fuel use growth would at best only plateau, given Chinese/Indian etc development. I forgot to mention that he was also extremely critical of bio fuel production. His was again an environmental argument - The degree to which new land would be needed to produce the ethanol (massive at current demand) would rob the planet of yet more of its 'regulatory mechnanism', adding to the warming feedback. He suggested 40% of the organic carbon pump had already gone and that anything like a significant increase in biofuel production would remove at large proportion of the rest. He suggested that the current consensus on the Amazon failing at 3 degrees (all my figures are Celsius).
While Lovelock himself did not seem cynical about the population at large, I did feel that the audience was, begin composed of what I assumed were mostly 'greens'.
Regarding nuclear energy, I think there are too many problems with it to make it a sound option:
A final note: here in Europe MSM takes advantage of high oil prices and global warming to paint nuclear energy as the solution (here in Spain there are some energy companies that own newspapers and TV stations), when what we have as a short to medium term problem is one of liquid fuels, and nuclear produces only electricity (and our cars still use liquid fuels), also there are some voices that blame the oil crisis in the 70s for the demise of the nuclear industry... high oil prices are bad for the nuclear business!
Before you cap a well, you pour down it the nuke waste, then pour cement down the well to cap it. It'll stay there for millions of years, inaccessible to terrorists. The drawback is that you'll get NIMBY-ism. May I suggest that we use depleted wells in TEXAS first? Since Bush likes nuke power so much, let him put his money where his mouth is!
There are workable solutions for dealing with the intermittency issue:
Compressed Air Energy Storage
RR
Store excess power by pumping water uphill. When needed, release it back downhill, and enjoy Bernoulli's principle at work.
Oh man, that's disheartening.
The BIG problem with fission is the finite amount of high concentration ores, and the BIG problem with fusion is that it Doesn't Really Work Yet™. I'm an Engineer by trade and it makes me very uncomfortable to let a new widget I've built leave the building without a few days of testing, needless to say, I'm not the type to bet the future on a technology that might be ready in 30 years. If we've already peaked on oil, we might not have the industrial infrastructure to build Fusion plants in 30 years.
I'm also not so thrilled about building a flock of fission plants which well could run out of cheap uranium before you can light the fusion candle. I had pinned some hopes on breeder reactors, but an hour with Google left me wondering if any fast breeders that have been built were ever commercially successful. (Anyone have a link?) Mostly I found articles about shutdowns and technical problems, and it wasn't clear that there were any breeders operating in 2006 that could even refuel themselves, an that makes me worry even more about the real world engineering complexities of making fusion commercial.
I'm probably overly-enthusiastic about wind -- I find it comforting that it's a known technology that won't take another 30 years before it comes online. I ponder the storage issue -- we have successful compressed air and pumped water storage today, but I think we'll need to stamp a pretty huge footprint on the landscape to build enough capture and storage to maintain a reasonable level of technology. I vote we do that that, but I'm only one vote.
I will not waste time debunking this since the specialists have done it many times already (for those who want to listen):
http://www.americanenergyindependence.com/uranium.html
The BIG problem with fission are peoples deceptions.
Well this is pretty ridiculous statement. Even with $40/pound the uranium represents just 2% of the end costs of the electricity produced. If you accept the obviously false statement that the uranium producers did not have profits, pay sallaries etc. and all their expenses were just for the energy for the uranium mining/enrichment, it would take 50 times rise of the costs for energy for an economic break even! For reference what such a rise would mean:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium
The quote is from K.Deffeyes (yes, the same one).
The US Army Corps of Engineers recently concluded that we have only 33-43 years of mineable natural uranium left on the planet, at the present rate of extraction.
http://stinet.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=A440265&Location=U2&doc=GetTRDoc.pdf
I'm sorry you chose not to even be bothered to read the report I posted, so I'll quote for you here regarding natural gas.
"In the long term, natural gas is like other non-renewable resources; world production will peak later this century and this resource will become scarce. There is an estimated 66 year supply at current rates of consumption while projected growth reduces this to 40 years. World peak production of natural gas is estimated to occur
sometime between 2030 and 2050 (Laherrere 2003).
But let's get back to the claim from the report:
What this misses to note is that no major search for uranium deposits has been commenced since the middle of the last century - it was simply not needed to produce more of the stuff. Just this is enough to show that comparing it to oil or NG is absolutely misleading and in fact manipulative. The other "missing" thing is that with the rise of the price the amount of economicaly minable reserves rise exponnentially. It is all scientific fact and can be checked independantly.
It makes a lot of sense if you take the time to think of it - uranium is not from abiotic origin like oil & gas; it is an abundant element, spread out relatively evenly in the earths crust (occurance is comparable to copper). Mind you - it will not run any time soon - just compare the amount of copper mined per year to the amount of uranium. As a last resort just the uranium in the seas would be enough to power our civilisation for millions of years.
If you're putting a lot of hope on finding new sources of yet-undiscovered uranium, then that is at best an unknown, and somebody better get looking, and fairly soon.
But if a significant ramp-up of nuclear is commenced - then the picture will change rather quickly. Unfortuantely my bet for the next decades is actually coal, not nuclear.
But who knows, probably in the very long run you may be right... I have a compromise suggestion - build nukes while we can to fix our current situation without cooking the Earth in the next decades. In the meantime we can invest in renewables and prepare for ramping them up if we see nuclear will not be able to make it in the longer run. After all planning for problems 50 years ahead or more hardly makes any sense, doesn't it?
We'd still better get started soon. It takes quite a while and substantial support infrastructure (raw materials, specialized skills, etc) to construct and operate a fissile pile plant.
http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/FTPROOT/nuclear/04782002.pdf
I think there is alot of potential for expansion of the uranium reserves, the opposite of what we have for oil or gas reserves, which have been thoroughly explored. I was struck by the paragraph in Deffeyes book where he describes how his well log went off the scale as the drill went through a deep deposit. I wonder how hard it would be to use leaching in that situation.
Even if the estimate is accurate, it makes several assumptions:
Economically mined? I can see the monopoly "Chance" card now: the little millionaire guy waving a wad of dollars at the ground and out pops pellets of fully refined uranium!
Sorry, I'm a very visual guy. ^_^
I don't happen to have a 26 year old copy of Scientific American around. Did they approach this problem from the perspective of EROEI? Did they assume that the price of uranium increased by 10x, while wages, oil, natural gas, water, and mining equipment remained the same?
From this quote, can we extrapolate that if the of the price of oil went up 10x, we could economically pump 300x as much oil? (Don't laugh, I know people who think that way.)
http://www.webelements.com/webelements/elements/text/U/geol.html
http://education.jlab.org/itselemental/ele092.html
You can compare it to other metals like copper and silver from which we are mining much larger quantities.
Like how fission makes economic sense in a free market?
Please explain why Nuclear Energy makes so much sense that the Price-Anderson Indemnity Act isn't needed.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price-Anderson_Nuclear_Industries_Indemnity_Act
(If Nuclear power is so safe, why does it need specail goverment coverage - why can't it be provided by the free market?)
Thanks God none of them is not regulated or aided by govt in some way - otherwise we would have ended with totally unusable planet and some technologies would not have existed at all.
Personally I'm not sure how to classify this double talk by environmentalists - it is all like asking for a perfect technology in an imperfect world. In the end some people are left with the responsibility to keep the lights on, while other guys are conveniently preaching from their higher grounds.
Then why use economic arguments of 'cost per watt' and pretend that it is a valid basis to make an informed decision.
The link you offered up did exactly that.
In the end some people are left with the responsibility to keep the lights on
Bigger question - why should the lights always be expected to be able to be turned on at any given instant VS an attitude of 'gee, there is only so much energy aviable at this time, do I want lights at this time or not?'
About the only thing in your link which should be answered, and most pro-fission won't answer - if the amount of uranium is found to be limited, would the government dismantle bombs to provide power?
I'm not sure I see how this relates to what I say: the cost per watt is a very real measure to compare energy sources. If the cost per watt is not competitive obviously if left to the market by itself the energy source will be dead. You are effectively saying why use a market indicator for something which is not 100% market driven? Where is the logic here? Are you suggesting the state to take over energy production and to do it regardless of costs? How are you going to defend that?
Bigger question - why should the lights always be expected to be able to be turned on at any given instant VS an attitude of 'gee, there is only so much energy aviable at this time, do I want lights at this time or not?'
I agree that we have created a wastful way of life that is trashing the planet and turning us into consumptive zombies. But I also don't want to see us descending into new dark ages, where people burn the last bit of carbon on earth and kill each other over energy... having a certain opinion about the human nature limiting our options and pushing unworkable solutions drives us exactly in this direction.
Not when one power generation method has a cap on its liabilites. The limitation of libalities creates an artifically low cost structure. Ergo - the cost per watt which has costs externalized via libilaties limitation is not the same as a cost per watt when one accepts externalized costs.
The nuclear industry is paying more on insurance than all other utilities combined, and you still consider that a "low cost structure"? How much do you want them to pay for some potential event that may never happen? Should coal miners insure against unwillingly causing a volcano erruption?
I intend to stop this argument here... obviously you have made your mind based on the fears most people have when they hear "nuclear". I admit you have the right to do so, but I can not argue fears - they tend to put a rational shape on otherwise absolutely irrational arguments and arguing with them is pointless.
Yes. By the power of government fiat, their liability is limited.
but I can not argue fears
What fear? I have pointed out how the industry features a loss liability.
You are the person who is opting not to address that issue.
My chemistry professor used to rant quite often during lectures about how journalists, being clueless about all things important, would publish exaggerated stories about Chernobyl (and other technical things they didnt understand) that they had gotten from some extremist environmentalist organisation. I was surprised, because I had always thought that Chernobyl was a real disaster.
from chernobyl.info:
"The report concludes that, all in all, the Chernobyl disaster will claim roughly 4000 lives. By mid 2005, it says, just over 50 persons will have died as a direct consequence of nuclear exposure."
A bit like 9/11, the damage wasn't mainly done by the explosions themself, but more by the fear and anger that gripped millions of people worldwide in the aftermath.
"12.68% CPI - This is Good News?
Consumer Price inflation for All Urban Consumers popped up 0.9% in April according to figures out this morning. This pencils out to an annualized rate of 11.35% or 12.68% if you use the more honest "old weights" for your calculations. Around here, that's what we go by because they seem to most closely track our personal spending experience in our own checkbooks."
http://www.urbansurvival.com/week.htm
It looks like Chavez might be expecting things to heat up in his neck of the woods, too. Following on the heels of a purchase of 100,000 new AK-103's, we have this news.
"Venezuela looking to swap U.S. F-16 fighters for Russian Su-35s"
http://en.rian.ru/world/20060517/48232490.html
Brazil continues to look like the dystopian devoluting third world country that it is:
"Brazilian police kill 33 gang suspects. Deaths bring the toll since Friday to 133, including 40 officers and guards."
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/world/3868465.html
"Dollar hits 8-mth low vs yen before inflation data"
http://za.today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=businessNews&storyID=2006-05-17T083229Z_0 1_BAN722745_RTRIDST_0_OZABS-MARKETS-FOREX-20060517.XML
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.nr0.htm
and here it is updated today!
i'd encourage people to check out Table A. big changes in transportation and energy, but if you personally are buffered on those (high efficiency car and appliances) then you won't take the 'average hit.'
medical costs continue their cimb ... stay healthy ...
Huh? Please explain, in what way did he "call 9/11"?
Sometimes it pays to look through the chaff for the wheat.
From peak oil to Fed Reserve Scam, all the hard data being manipulated for CPI, GDP, etc. to finally finding out about Iran Contra, true belied that our leaders are culpable for 9/11, and even to a general belief in a small group of highly successful people controlling the major spokes of our societies.
Maybe I'm just going crazy...that would make it easier to deal with all the facts.
U.S. crude oil stockpiles fell by 100,000 barrels last week, gasoline inventories rose by 1.3 million barrels. More soon.
RR
"Gas prices pick up again. After taking a break for a week, pump prices nationwide scramble 3.8 cents higher; West Coast most expensive region, EIA survey reveals."
http://money.cnn.com/2006/05/15/news/economy/eia_gas.reut/?cnn=yes
'We Just Want Our Voices Heard'
May 17, 2006 | Issue 42*20
WASHINGTON, DC--More than 1,000 majority shareholders and executive officers from the nation's largest oil companies gathered in the National Mall and marched to Capitol Hill Monday in a mass demonstration for petrochemical corporations' rights and, according to several of those who attended, "to let our voices be heard at last."
http://www.theonion.com/content/node/48458
Our Long National Nightmare Of Peace And Prosperity Is Finally Over
And Yankees Ensure 2003 Pennant By Signing Every Player In Baseball (written before they signed A-Rod).
Startlingly prophetic, I tell you. ;-)
Energy Policy: New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman lays out his "laws of petropolitics"
http://www.eande.tv/main/?date=051706
There are many articles about Saudi Oil reserves, most say 260B barrels in reserve. There are also articles about Saudi Oil Decline at 8% per year (posted on platts back in April, it has since been removed?) Just charting those figures from now until about 2022 The Saudis would have zero reserves left. This is based on an 8% decline rate of their largest oil fields (which was stated on platts). This is also based on maintaining current pumping rates and adding 2% per year based on demand. On year one at 260B barrels of oil the Saudis would reach zero on year 16.5. Other articles also state that the Saudis have been posting the same reserve number for the past 17 years without change while 46BB of oil have been produced from this base? http://www.theglobalist.com/StoryId.aspx?StoryId=5275
If I were to take out the 46BB of oil, ground zero is 14.75 years away... the last drop so to speak.
So what does all of this mean?
1.) Saudis have more oil than they state?
2.) Saudis have less oil than they state?
3.) Saudis can pump oil at same rate while adding 2% for growth every year and maintain that rate until the last drop in 16.5 years?
Will we ever find out how much Saudis have left in reserve?
Or will we wake up one day have hear a huge THUD?
(joke sorry, 1 goes into...)
Year Reserve 2% growth BB
1 260,000,000,000 73,000,000 3,650,000,000
2 235,477,000,000 74,460,000 3,723,000,000
3 209,191,380,000 75,949,200 3,797,460,000
4 184,932,660,400 77,468,184 3,873,409,200
5 162,537,170,184 79,017,548 3,950,877,384
6 141,854,301,638 80,597,899 4,029,894,932
7 122,745,464,676 82,209,857 4,110,492,830
8 105,083,124,815 83,854,054 4,192,702,687
9 88,749,918,089 85,531,135 4,276,556,741
10 73,637,836,767 87,241,758 4,362,087,875
11 59,647,480,192 88,986,593 4,449,329,633
12 46,687,365,551 90,766,325 4,538,316,226
13 34,673,293,757 92,581,651 4,629,082,550
14 23,527,766,055 94,433,284 4,721,664,201
15 13,179,447,286 96,321,950 4,816,097,485
16 3,562,672,068 98,248,389 4,912,419,435
17 -5,383,009,521 100,213,356 5,010,667,824
Matthew Simmons feels that the decline is likely 8%-10%...
Read his recent presentation:
"Matthew R. Simmons presented "Tight Oil Supplies" at the Security Analysts of San Francisco and NAPIA Meeting in San Francisco, California on May 8, 2006."
http://www.simmonsco-intl.com/files/Security%20Analysts%20of%20SFO.pdf
260,000,000,000 * 8% (decline) = 20,800,000,000
260B - 20.8B = 239,200,000,000 reserve
3.65B current production, we need to add 2% growth per year
what's 2% of 3.65B? 73M
now take the 3,650,000,000 * 2% (growth) = 73,000,000
add 3,650,000,000 + 73,000,000 for total pump demand = 3,723,000,000
So on, so forth each year performing the calcs...adjusting...
that's the numbers.
You said an 8% decline in available oil.
You're kidding right?
Dubai(Platts) --11Apr2006
Saudi Aramco's mature crude oil fields are expected to decline at a gross average rate of 8%/year without additional maintenance and drilling, a Saudi Aramco spokesman said Tuesday.
And Matthew Simmons stated it may be more like 8-10% decline... (you can read that on his site)...
I was merely throwing a "what if" calculation to see where we would be at given an 8% decline per year with the 2% increase in production demand each year that Saudi would have to meet... if they have 260B reserve... see where I was trying to go with this?
Platts removed the document... you can still see the google cached doc here:
http://72.14.203.104/search?q=cache:PxfxqCVhZAkJ:www.platts.com/Oil/News/8377179.xml%3Fsub%3DOil%26p %3DOil/News%26%3Fundefined%26undefined+saudi+oil+8%25+decline&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd =1
Saudi Aramco boosts drilling efforts to offset declining fields
Dubai (Platts)--11Apr2006
Saudi Aramco's mature crude oil fields are expected to decline at a gross
average rate of 8%/year without additional maintenance and drilling, a Saudi
Aramco spokesman said Tuesday.
But Saudi Aramco has taken a number of measures to offset a decline in
output from the country's aging oil fields, the spokesman added.
"A variety of remedial activities are always being taken in oil fields
influencing their effective decline rates," the spokesman said. "The drilling
of additional development wells in the producing fields is Saudi Aramco's
standard practice to offset normal declines of older wells."
This is particularly important when oil fields are progressively depleted
under a well thought out strategy of maximizing the sweep and displacement
efficiencies, leading to high ultimate oil recovery, the spokesman said.
"This maintain potential drilling in mature fields combined with a
multitude of remedial actions and the development of new fields, with long
plateau lives, lowers the composite decline rate of producing fields to around
2%," the spokesman said.
Underscoring these efforts, Saudi Aramco signed two contracts with J. Ray
McDermott Middle East and McDermott Arabia Company Ltd, subsidiaries of J. Ray
McDermott, to detail design, procure, fabricate, transport and install
offshore facilities for the Maintain Potential and Khursaniyah Upstream
Pipeline programs, Saudi Aramco said April 6.
The first contract includes two drilling support structures in Zuluf
field to be installed in December 2006 and one new wellhead production
platform in the Central Safaniya oil field to support onstream start-up in May
2007, Saudi Aramco said.
Three additional wellhead platforms will be installed in the Central
Safaniya and Zuluf fields by December 2007. New associated flowlines will
connect these platforms to existing offshore tie-in (manifold) platforms.
To support increasing production in the Central Safaniya field, a new
tie-in platform (Safaniya TP-18) will also be engineered, procured, fabricated
and installed by December 2007, along with a 24-inch trunkline between it and
a subsea connection on the new 42-inch trunkline flowing to the onshore
Safaniya GOSP-1, installed under a separate contract.
The second contract is associated with the subsea portion, some 22 km (14
miles) long, of the 30-inch gas pipeline from Abu Ali Island to an onshore
site at Khursaniyah to be installed by May 2007.
This subsea portion is part of the new 66 km BKTG-1 pipeline that will
transport 220 million cubic feet/day of gas from Abu Ali Plant to Khursaniyah
Gas Plant.
--Glen Carey, glen_carey@platts.com
Run the same spreadsheet starting it with 260 billion barrels and subtracting only the oil expected to be produced in a given year. No matter what certain reports say, overall current Saudi production is not declining at 8% per year. If you feel that this will happen in the future, then you can add it to your equation.
I said nothing of a "theoretical daily production decline"... did you read the platts article?
"Saudi Aramco's mature crude oil fields are expected to decline at a gross
average rate of 8%/year without additional maintenance and drilling, a Saudi
Aramco spokesman said Tuesday."
An aramco spokesman said the fields are expected to decline at a rate of 8%/year if they don't have additional maintenance on the fields.
With maintenance they will decline at 2%...
"following a peak?"...
Decline is decline is decline...
they've peaked according to this Aramco spokesman...
I'm not making this up... and I'm only throwing this out there to get some input from other people.
I would really like to know what other people are finding on this subject.
If we are at peak then Saudi production should be dropping by between 5 and 8 percent per year starting, well, now - that is if you believe this extremely faulty interpretation of events. I don't see it happening.
The 8 percent is a number that has been tossed around recently. It appears in the article you cite, and elsewhere. Sure that's what individual fields get for a decline rate shortly post-peak. We know this much. But that is a far cry from overall Saudi crude production dropping by that much next year.
The whole issue is whether Saudi can increase its overall production by a forecast 2% rate which is needed to support expected demand, while at the same time countering 8% declines in its oldest and biggest fields.
An overall decline of 8% assumes all fields are post-peak, and there are no new fields coming on-line.
They are producing 9.5 million barrels per day now. If they are only producing 8.8 million barrels per day next year this time, I'll eat my shoe. But if you want to believe that will be the case, be my guest.
The 9.5 million number I use is of course straight crude, Saudi also produces another 1.2 mbpd of other stuff that is considered crude-equivalent. You have to add that to the 9.5 to get their contribution to worldwide total liquids production of 85 million barrels per day. This 1.2 mbpd production seems fairly steady and is not declining at 8%.
I really don't know whether Saudi Oil is in decline or not, I'm merely re-stating what other's are reporting. I personally just really want to learn the truth... I've been hearing allot about this topic lately... much speculation... but no real "hard numbers" to enforce direction.
You'r handle is "Oil CEO"... I myself am the CTO of a major company... and I also own my own consulting company and I've been so busy in business that I have had my head below the surface for some years... to be honest... I had never heard of PO up until 2 mos ago.
I really don't watch TV much, I work from 5am til about 6pm every day, come home spend some time with my family...go to bed and do it all over again... however a few months ago I came across a PO article... and have been pursuing the truth ever since :-/
-Have a good one.
If you check these numbers against other tables and sources that show total world production totaling 84 to 85 million barrels per day, you will see that Saudi's contribution is the total of these two numbers or 10.7-11 mbpd. Since it is counted as crude, I'd call it crude equivalent, wouldn't you? BP gives Saudi production in 2004 as 10.584 mbpd, for instance, obviously a combination of the two sources. If you would like more information, you can start with the footnotes on these sources.
What's your source?
The tables are all there.
I surpmise that, like any smart production-based enterprise, they use their storage capacity to regulate actual "output", drawing from it as needed, and adding to it when they have excess, on a day-to-day basis. Aramco has the largest petroleum storage capacity of anyone in the world, after all.
If they're actually seeing an decline in day-to-day production from their wells, thanks to the ability to draw any shortfall from storage, it may well be a very long time before these shortfalls become evident in their actual "output", the amount supplied.
In short, their massive buffer allows for a very effective "smoothing" function (as is apparent) and also for substantial lag time on any depletion being "visible" (not apparent), and they have every incentive to keep such depletion invisible for as long as humanly possible.
years production 8% decline mb/day
1 3,600,000,000 288,000,000 9,863,014
2 3,312,000,000 264,960,000 9,073,973
3 3,047,040,000 243,763,200 8,348,055
4 2,803,276,800 224,262,144 7,680,210
5 2,579,014,656 206,321,172 7,065,794
6 2,372,693,484 189,815,479 6,500,530
7 2,182,878,005 174,630,240 5,980,488
8 2,008,247,764 160,659,821 5,502,049
9 1,847,587,943 147,807,035 5,061,885
10 1,699,780,908 135,982,473 4,656,934
So?... again... just wanting some input from others; anyone else have somethint to add/detract?
Are we going to see a decline in available oil on the market or is this all "make believe" and we'll have plenty for 2-300 years to come?
The 8% (if accurate - an entirely different question) is the decline in production rate of a field from one year to the next, not the rate of depletion of the reserves.
they're producing 3.65B per year now decrease by 8% per year...that doesn't sound good either...
Anyone?
Since Texas peaked in 1972, our annual net decline rate (after adding new production every year) has been about 4.5% per year.
Addicted to crude
http://mondediplo.com/2006/05/06oilproduction
Excerpt:
Such doubts are reinforced by the fact that estimates of reserves published by some Opec countries have sometimes remained unchanged for long periods, as if each barrel produced was miraculously and immediately replaced thanks to a discovery or re-evaluation. For example, Iraq put its reserves at exactly 100bn barrels throughout 1987-95, before raising the figure to 115bn. Equally surprisingly, between 1991 and 2002 Kuwait's proven reserves remained at 96.5bn barrels despite cumulative production of 8.4bn barrels during that period. Using data reportedly supplied by Kuwaiti officials, the US Petroleum Intelligence Weekly asserted in January 2006 that official figures muddled proven, probable and possible reserves and that genuinely proven reserves amounted to no more than 48bn barrels.
Thanks to the opacity of the statistics and the unreliability of the methodology used to make the calculation, the level of the Russian Federation's reserves remains uncertain. But some western sources estimate that the real level of proven Russian reserves is 30%-40% lower than the official figure of 72.3bn barrels.
There are even doubts about the figures given by international companies quoted on the stock exchange and subject to checks by auditors. In January 2004, following a marked fall in production at its Yibal field in Oman and disappointing results elsewhere, Shell admitted that it had overstated its reserves by almost 33%. A few months later the US company El Paso revised its reserves down by 11%. More recently, in January 2006, the Spanish group Repsol YPF had to cut 1.25bn barrels of oil equivalent, almost 25% of the total, from its previously published estimate of its worldwide reserves of hydrocarbons. Like Shell, it was deluged by legal claims from shareholders.
We're in deep doody.... Saudi is suppose to increase production....(we can go to 12, 15 20 mb/day when the market calls for it...) if they're in decline, how can they possibly do this?
years production 8% decline mb/day
1 3,600,000,000 288,000,000 9,863,014
2 3,312,000,000 264,960,000 9,073,973
3 3,047,040,000 243,763,200 8,348,055
4 2,803,276,800 224,262,144 7,680,210
5 2,579,014,656 206,321,172 7,065,794
6 2,372,693,484 189,815,479 6,500,530
7 2,182,878,005 174,630,240 5,980,488
8 2,008,247,764 160,659,821 5,502,049
9 1,847,587,943 147,807,035 5,061,885
10 1,699,780,908 135,982,473 4,656,934
Will we be seeing 70, 80-90% water cut shortly after 2010? This is very disturbing to ponder. I truly hope that we're all wrong... that the Saudis have 4 trillion barrels of oil just floating around waiting to be tapped and we can go on chowing down at the oil buffet in our Hummer H2's knowing that the oil will just seep back up from the magma... I am to blame just as the next guy...
I have 2 Mercedes SUV's ML500's gas guzzlers... I was pondering trading one in on a VW TDI until I found that they're manufactured in Mexico:-/ I have nothing against Mexico...just the fact that they rank near the bottom of JD Power on auto repair complaints... so I will wait till 2007 to see what happens with diesel cars in US....
Apologies on the tangent ramblings in advance...
There are other options.
The 05 ML500 has seen 19mpg on hwy...
After coming into the knowlege of where we're headed...PO and all... I could care less what I'm driving as long as it doesn't cost me an arm/leg in repairs...
I've actually been looking at getting a Harley... 57mpg not to bad... just that here in Houston...I would have a survival rate of fly on a frog pond... the commute to Houston from where I live in Sugar Land, TX is insane to say the least...
everyone is doing 85/90 mph... constant lane changing... accidents every day... I'm just thinking I might not be around very long if I decide to take to two wheels in this environment...
I really detest cars, and have a growing dislike for driving, but this vehicle and a 1968 Saab 98 I owned in college were the exception.
Saudi Aramco's mature crude oil fields are expected to decline at a gross
average rate of 8%/year without additional maintenance and drilling, a Saudi
Aramco spokesman said Tuesday.
Yes? No?
Sip...
Hey wait a minute... you guys said you would be at 12 mb/day by 2009 we're at 9.2 mb/day 2009 at 2% decline "best case scenario with maintenance and drilling"...
But if world growth is 2% per year, Saudi will need to provide 10,612,080 mb/day... who will pick up the 1,329,090 mb/day deficit from the Saudis?
anyone else in OPEC have 1.3 mb/day to spare?
Conservative 2% decline per year (production!)
years production 2% decline mb/day year of production
1 3,600,000,000 72,000,000 9,863,014 2006
2 3,528,000,000 70,560,000 9,665,753 2007
3 3,457,440,000 69,148,800 9,472,438 2008
4 3,388,291,200 67,765,824 9,282,990 2009
5 3,320,525,376 66,410,508 9,097,330 2010
6 3,254,114,868 65,082,297 8,915,383 2011
7 3,189,032,571 63,780,651 8,737,076 2012
8 3,125,251,920 62,505,038 8,562,334 2013
9 3,062,746,881 61,254,938 8,391,087 2014
10 3,001,491,944 60,029,839 8,223,266 2015
IMO, the Saudis have about 80 Gb in recoverable reserves left.
Graphs at: http://graphoilogy.blogspot.com/
The HL method gives them 80 Gb.
Texas, the Lower 48, Total US, Russia and the North Sea all peaked in the vicinity of 50% of Qt. None of these regions have shown higher production than what they showed in the vicinity of 50% of Qt.
In 2005, Saudi Arabia was at the same point--in terms of depletion--at which Texas peaked. Texas and Saudi Arabia were the only two swing producers of consequence.
Wow! I'd like to see the HL chart on that one.
Have either you or Khebab posted it on another thread?
So, I guess 80 billion was a typo?
You actually meant 180 Billion.
It may turn out that the US is the Saudi Arabia of Oil, afterall.
Gas providers are trying to pass on costs to their customers (cities) as they are reaching the point of not making a profit:
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2006-05/17/content_4555872.htm
China is becoming very gung-ho about biofuels:
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2006-05/17/content_4555470.htm
I wonder if they will really reach the 10% energy share by renewables in 2020, as stated.
Finally, we are assured that the Three Gorges Dam is safe from terrorists:
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2006-05/17/content_4563182.htm
That huge water engineering project is intended, among other things, to be an important source of hydroelectric power.
Has the Long Peak-Oil Emergency Begun?
This would eliminate the inefficient heat engines and electricity generators needed to produce the electricity for the electrolysis on large scale. Of course when it comes to nuclear many people automatically say no...
Extracting heat from the safety protected core with minimal heat loss, while creating hydrogen SO close to the core, seems quite problematic.
IMHO,nuke fans like it becaus eit is nuke, but practically not worth much effort to investigate.
Hydrogen has uses (upgrade Canadian tar sands, heavy oils, etc.) but I do not see the demand to be so great that R&D should be spent to design the one to 5 or so reactors that would ever be built. Figure first reactor on-line after 2025.
I have had three hour plus converstaions with Dr. Bragi Arnason on this subject and related matters.
I don't see why we could not copy/paste their experience here.
it seems I took too much load over myself :)
Someone call 60 Minutes.
"Brazil's Ethanol Lesson Is How to Manage Our Oil Addiction"
David G. Victor
The Brazilian government is declaring victory in its decades-long struggle to become self-sufficient in the supply of oil. The milestone is cause for celebration in a country that has long paid a high price for imported energy.
It will also reverberate here in the United States where policy-makers, too, are trying to wean the nation from costly imports, jittery markets and the foreign spigot.
But we must learn the right lessons. Brazil's success came not from treating oil as an addiction but by producing even more of the stuff and by becoming even more dependent on world markets.
Here in the United States, most attention to Brazil's fuel supply has focused on the country's aggressive program to replace oil with ethanol that is made by fermenting homegrown sugar. American newspapers are filled with stories about Brazil's famous "flex fuel" vehicles that make it easy to switch between ethanol and conventional gasoline.
Guided partly by Brazil's apparent success, American policy-makers are crafting new mandates for ethanol, and flex fuel vehicles are now taking shape. We have the impression that ethanol is king.
In reality, ethanol is a minor player in Brazilian energy supply. It accounts for less than one-tenth of all the country's energy liquids.
The real source of Brazil's self-sufficiency is the country's extraordinary success in producing more oil. After the 1970s oil shocks, when Brazil's fuel import bill soared, the government pushed Petrobras, the state-controlled oil company, to look asunder for new energy sources.
Petrobras delivered, especially at home, where the firm pioneered the technologies that make it possible to extract oil locked in sediments under the seabed in extremely deep water.
In the middle 1970s Brazil struggled to produce just 180,000 barrels of oil per day while importing four times that amount. Today it produces about 2 million and is self-sufficient. Indeed, the current milestone of self-sufficiency arrives with the inauguration of Brazil's newest deep water platform, the P50.
When P50 reaches its full output later this year, that one platform will deliver more liquid to Brazil than the country's entire ethanol program.
Brazil's self-sufficiency offers three lessons for U.S. energy policy:
* First is that ethanol, with current technology, will do little to sever our dependence on imported energy. Today's approach involves growing a crop - sugar in Brazil, corn in the United States - and then fermenting the fruits to yield fuel.
Sugar plants in Brazil's climate are a lot more efficient at converting sunlight to biomass than is corn in the Midwest, but U.S. policy nonetheless favors corn (and imposes tariffs on imported sugar) because the program is really a scheme to deliver heartland votes rather than a commercially viable fuel.
Yet, even with Brazil's favorable climate and sugar's inviting biology, ethanol is already reaching the limit. That's because the land and other resources devoted to ethanol can be put to other uses such as growing food and cash crops.
Indeed, today the Brazilian government is actually reducing the share of ethanol that must be blended into gasoline because sugar growers prefer to make even more money by selling their product as sugar on the world market rather than fermenting it into alcohol.
New technologies - notably "cellulosic biomass" - could breathe fresh life into ethanol and replace still more oil. Cellulosic biomass is intriguing because it cuts costs by allowing the entire plant - the cellulose in the stalks, as well as the prized grain or sugar - to be fermented into fuel.
Advocates for this technology, including President Bush in his State of the Union address, have wrongly confused the sexy promise of this newfangled approach to making ethanol with the practical realities of fuel markets.
Schemes to produce cellulosic biomass, today, work only under special circumstances and nobody has delivered the fuel at the industrial scale that would be required for the technology to become commercially viable.
* Second, we should learn that, for now, the greatest force to loosen the world's oil markets lies with oil itself. We can use oil more efficiently, as would occur with a gasoline tax or wise fuel economy standards. But we can also find ways to produce more of the stuff - as Brazil did with Petrobras.
The problem for U.S. policy-makers is that the richest veins for new production lie mainly outside the United States and beyond our direct control.
Indeed, the Brazilian government made Petrobras more efficient by putting the firm partly beyond its control as well. When the government sold part of the company on international stock exchanges, it accepted Western accounting procedures and other strictures that have given Petrobras the autonomy and accountability to its shareholders that, in turn, helped make it an efficient company.
We have a stake in seeing other countries do the same - from Algeria to Mexico to Iran and even Russia. But we must remember that Brazil did this on its own, in response to internal pressures for reform, with little leverage from foreign governments.
* Third, we should learn from Brazil not to confuse the goal of greater self-sufficiency with the illusion of independence. Even as Brazil has become self-sufficient it has also, ironically, become more dependent on world markets.
That's because the Brazilian government has wisely relaxed price controls so that the prices of fuels within the country are set to the world market. Thus Brazilians see real world prices when they fill up at the pump, and the decisions about which cars to buy and how much to drive reflect real costs and benefits of the fuel they consume.
That is why, even as the country becomes self-sufficient, Brazilians are working ever harder to be more frugal with oil - because the price at the pump is high and rising.
Dependence on oil is a liability that must be managed. But it is not an addiction. Efficiency, sober policies toward modest alternatives such as ethanol, and more production - all tools of the manager, not the addict - are required. Brazil helps show the way, but only if we learn the right lessons.
Victor is director of the Program on Energy and Sustainable Development at Stanford University and adjunct senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, where he directs research on energy policy. His email for contact: dgvictor@stanford.edu"
http://www.offnews.info/verArticulo.php?contenidoID=4167
I even learned a thing or two. Like:
In reality, ethanol is a minor player in Brazilian energy supply. It accounts for less than one-tenth of all the country's energy liquids.
I did not know that. Since I try to learn something new every day, thanks for helping me meet that objective for today.
RR
it will come in handy dispeling the damage the recent peices on ethanol did.
"Most Americans aren't likely to make big cuts in gasoline use.
By James R. Healey, Chris Woodyard and Barbara Hagenbaugh, USA TODAY
Americans are unlikely to slice their gasoline use despite high fuel prices -- a striking notion viewed against the current clamor for fuel-efficient cars, the buzz about alternatives to gasoline and the anger about sending our petro dollars to hostile but oil-rich countries."
http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/energy/2006-05-15-conserve-usat_x.htm
I laugh at the news!
Prices are having an impact on consumption.
Kind of puts a damper on the ethanol idea...
I'd planned to post on this earlier, but became sidetracked.
This has been an ongoing trend for several years now.
Very nice work Leanan!
"World grain supplies (coarse grain and wheat) are expected be much tighter in 2006/07, boosting global grain prices. Rising consumption is expected to outstrip production for the second straight year, which would push world grain ending stocks to the lowest levels in more than 25 years."
http://www.fas.usda.gov/grain/circular/2006/05-06/graintoc.htm
Most interesting. It looks like this will be a slow squeeze as stocks are gradually depleted.
Is there any breakdown anywhere that they give the amount of grain that is harvested which is fed to animals? I am thinking that this will be the first thing to get cut - reduction in herd sizes along with skyrocketing meat prices.
Grass-fed animals won't be affected by this except to the extent that shortages of meat from grain-fed animals will cause prices for grass-fed animals to increase as well.
Excellent, but depressing post! Obviously, Peak Everything is gaining momentum: the question is how will the world respond? Will the basic model be Zimbabwe, Sudan, Iraq, and other horrors? Or will the world push be in the direction of modeling the energy independence efforts of Sweden and others?
I still believe triage in the form of large, distinct biosolar habitats with Earthmarine protection will arise in many areas globally. Even if our global leaders and MSM went to broadcasting Peakoil and global warming 24/7/365: large numbers of detritovores would resist to the last moment of switching over to the new paradigm. Thus a schism in society will inevitably arise as the biosolar pioneers will seek the safety of 'land lifeboats' while the detritovores, in true denial fashion, will cling to the sinking paradigm til the last second. The extent of Overshoot relative to what is actually biodiversely sustainable will determine the levels of cooperation and violence as we descend the Hubbert Downslope.
It is easily foreseeable whereby the elites could abandon the American shores, and take their families and massive accumulations of wealth with them, so that it precipitates a rapid collapse the US society. Those biosolar pioneers willing to labor and live off what nature purely provides daily will then be in an advantageous position and location to thrive the best. Appropriate sized Earthmarine no-go buffer zones can then prevent the invasion of the hapless detritivores, who waited too long to shift to a biosolar lifestyle, and now have neither the required minimal natural resources and appropriate skill development to sustain themselves.
Bob Shaw in Phx,Az Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
I believe global warming poses a greater immediate threat than Peak Oil. I plan to submit an essay here within a few days explaining my position.
RR
I think PO will be mitigated (more or less painfully) but GW is simply a lost cause and we will need to adapt to it.
shell and bp are only playing lip service to the people who say global warming is a problem. they might clean up a visible plant here or there in the first world but they don't do a thing to their heavily polluting third world plants that are out of the public eye.
remember out of sight is out of mind for these people.
Site http://www.itulip.com/energyandmoney.htm#PartII
"....To think that you could pull into your garage at the end of the day and 'fill 'er up' just by plugging your car into a regular, 110-volt socket in the garage is very appealing," said Rep. Judy Biggert (news, bio, voting record), R-Ill.,...."
I doubt if she and other proponents of plug-in hybrids have given much thought as to what is on the upstream side of that 110-volt socket. Even plain old run-of-the-mill coal fired power plants have quite a long lead time from decision to build to the time when electricity actually starts flowing. Nukes have an even longer lead time, plus the very real prospect of being tied up in lawsuits for years by various NIMBYs and greenies.
So then, how do these people expect that all this massive increase in electricity is going to suddenly appear?
Or is this like the 'hydrogen economy', where it is suppose to just 'happen'?
(23% nuke, 12% hydro, 10% geothermal .... 3% wind, 1% solar)
mandate energy star everything, set progressive use rates to slash air conditioning, ... , add some capacity (of any type), charge (small, lightweight, low power) electric cars at night.
the smaller/efficient gasoline and diesel cars, that 'preserve the suburbs' and cause anti-suburbanites such heartburn, will buy us those 10+ years.
My paper on the subject (again)
http://www.lightrailnow.org/features/f_lrt_2005-02.htm
counting technology chickens after they are hatched and all that.
Very slowly evolving battery technology continues to be the big stumbling block to many of these electronic inovations, it does not follow Moore's Law and has been substantially lagging most technological improvements in computing, telecommunications, and electrical power storage and distribution.
Until recently, investment in battery technology has been relatively small. "In the last 100 years, there hasn't been enough work put into batteries. It's just not exciting stuff," says Rob Enderle, an analyst at Enderle Group in San Jose.
For example: Sony's new PSP only gets 3 hours of battery use before it is dead. Most new laptops can barely get through a DVD before they are out.
Hell, we cannot even get battery form factors to be standardized.
There is an excellent article in Popular Science (October 2004, "Your Battery Is Dead", not sure if it's available online) that basically proves what most people have known for a long time: Big companies love to screw you by charging inordinate amounts of money for specialized batteries. To quote the article:
"Here, for instance, is our favorite Frequently Unanswered Question (FUQ): Why is there an utter lack of standardization in battery shapes, sizes and chargers? Manufacturers will tell you that it has to do with efficient design. Maybe. Richard Doherty of Envisioneering has a darker take:
Twelve years ago there was an effort by Duracell with all the laptop makers to make a series of universal rechargeable bateries," he says. "Fell on its face -- PC makers found that selling a variety of batteries is more profitable."
http://www.computerworld.com/mobiletopics/mobile/story/0,10801,98793,00.html?from=story_package
http://www.engadget.com/2005/01/19/battery-life-isnt-going-to-get-better-anytime-soon/
Think about this a little first....
Power plants are designed so that we will have enough power available in that region for the highest possible power usage day. For example, in California the highest usage day is usually some day(s) in August/September when the temperature across most of the state is in the 90s and is 100+ in the Central Valley. The peak usage is usually late afternoon, when businesses are still using some power for lighting and air conditioning and people at home are cranking up their air conditioners.
However, at 3:00am even though some people may still be using their air conditioners there is plenty of power available. Right now, temperatures in CA are not that hot yet so there is plenty of power available. see - http://www.caiso.com/outlook/SystemStatus.html
So... people could bring their cars home and plug them in to charge sometime in the middle of the night. I don't know what the energy usage of the car would be when it is recharging the car battery... Can someone come up with a number for that? I'm guessing that it is probably lower than the amount a refrigerator would use per hour.
That's a lot more than a fridge motor. But a million such cars would only need one typical base-load generating unit to be fully supplied (i.e. 720 megawatts electrical). Regenerative braking might save what, 50%, but the car would be a lot more complex & expensive.
Does this sound right? Seems amazingly low...
Scoop is here >>> http://politics.guardian.co.uk/homeaffairs/story/0,,1777283,00.html
Former weapons LOTS there
Recycled spent fuel (a majority of the U-235 is not burnt, and lots of Plutonium and higher products left that burn well).
New discoveries. Unlike oil, there has been little incentive to look for uranium in the last 3 decades.
Breed Thorium. In a CANDU reactor, mixing in thorium will not breed more U-233 than U 235 burnt (from memory), but it will extend fuel life considerably (50% to 80%).
Air France-KLM Profit Falls 30% as Oil Costs Increase
or
Air France-KLM FY net soars 29.3 pct to 913 mln eur despite heavy fuel charge
Fun part is: Same company, same numbers, same press release, completely opposite reporting. Pick the one you like most, or is the most covenient at the watercooler ;-)