DrumBeat: July 28, 2006
Posted by threadbot on July 28, 2006 - 9:30am
Challenges of Linking Kuwaiti Production with Oil Reserve
Ten members of the Kuwaiti National Assembly last week tabled a motion to link Kuwait's crude oil production with its oil reserve. After it is passed by parliament it will become a law under which the Ministry of Energy and the oil sector will operate.
Aging grids cited in blackouts
The nation's power system may be showing its age.Recent heat wave-related blackouts in California and New York are at least partly being blamed on creaky transformers, circuit breakers and cables.
Green Party candidate calls for national oil company
Howie Hawkins, the Green Party candidate for US Senate from New York, called today for the creation of a national oil company to help protect American consumers against the rapidly escalating price hikes for gasoline.
U.S. policy entangled by rising price of oil
Oil Is Like Milk; China Has No Need to Buy Cows
Andy Mukherjee thinks China should trust the market.
If you need milk every day, you should buy a refrigerator. A cow in the backyard would be too much.
Violence continues to stymie production in oil-rich Nigeria, as Royal Dutch Shell announced its production levels have not recovered in 2006 and armed militants took 40 oil workers hostage this week.A Shell executive told reporters Wednesday that production levels were expected to be down in 2006 due to the continuing violence directed at foreign oil companies operating in the oil-rich West African nation.
API: U.S. Oil, Gas Drilling Activity Hits Two-Decade High In Q2
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Re: Electricity
I would like to make a pitch for one or more threads on the electrical grid, primarily in the United States, but also worldwide. Consider the following:
- Arguably even more than automobile transportation, electricity is fundamental to the way we live and work today
- Electricity has been gaining in share of all energy consumption since its inception
- Many of the peak oil mitigation solutions being proposed at the Oil Drum and elsewhere involve electricity, for example electric and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (EVs, PHEVs), light rail, certain renewable energy sources such as solar and wind power, and of course the rebirth of nuclear fission
- Electricity is relatively agnostic as to how it's generated and as such is a good energy exchange format between a wide variety of sources and sinks
- Electricity is in the news during the hot summer months as usage strains capacity
- Fossil fuel-based electricity generation, particularly coal, is a significant source of greenhouse gas emissions
For these reasons and more, I for one would be quite interested in learning more about how the electrical grid works, not just technically, but economically and politically as well. I know there is a lot of information readily available, (http://www.eia.doe.gov/fuelelectric.html, for example), but it would be nice to see the topic discussed here. I don't have the expertise to write about the grid, but it's likely that qualified and willing contributors can be readily found amongst the Oil Drum community and their friends, professional colleagues and family members.Maybe we should contact these folks and see if they have an expert to help lead a discussion on the topic.
I am reposting my response that was near the bottom of the Khosla ethanol thread.
Here are my thoughts again.
1. Reduce consumption everywhere, particularly liquid fuels, via drive for efficiency of motors and conversion of fuel energy to work.
2. Eliminate waste everywhere. All waste will be some one elses raw material. Stop sending everything to Land fills. Ames Iowa has one of three Resource Recovery plants in the nation (built in the 1970's) that sorts metals, glass and others and and provides refuse derived fuel, RDF. The RDF is sent directly to the coal fired generating plant and reduces coal consumption very significantly, electric rates haven't changed for 25 years. We need more of this approach country wide.
3. Mass transit should be funded massively to reduce use of cars for work commuting. This can be electric, hybrid diesel or other and can be light rail buses or other. The goal is lots of bodies moved per btu's consumed.
4. Raise CAFE standards (double?) now with built in increases yearly. Make sure these can't be reversed if things improve in the short run.
5. Do not pick winning transportation strategy (hybrid, electric, hydrogen, NG, etc.) but allow 3) to crank up innovation.
6. Each state must identify the correct mix of alternative low fossil fuel energy to chase. This needs to be fostered with incentives provided nationally to holistically reduce energy consumption and start capturing renewable energy.
7. I live in Iowa and see ethanol from corn and biodiesel from soybeans as viable for the midwest. Good EROEI in these states where irrigation is not needed. This technology should not be exported to all 50 states.
8. For the midwest it makes sense to maintain a liquid fuel supply to farm and transport agricultural commodities. Biofuels can meet this need with waste streams feeding animals or used for industrial purposes.
9. The loop on biofuels can be closed in the midwest. Percent of crop used to make fuel which is used to plant and harvest next crop with distillers grains and glycerine being used locally to make more food. If this can be done other places with other raw material it should be pursued. Energy must be captured and used locally, don't make ethanol from cellulose in New England and send it to Arizona for consumption. All the efficiency is lost in transportation.
10. The goal is for each state/region to manage their energy balance, gaining as much non fossil energy as possible from appropriate sources. Every southern state is a natural for solar cells on every roof surface.
11. Push solar, wind and micro-hydro at the individual consumer level. Facilitate a distributed grid for electricity production and storage. Lots of small generating sites rather than a few huge generating sites. Big companies can manage the maintenance and distribution system.
12. All of above should be set up to allow people to track their consumption and production of energy so that feed back loops get created.
13. Once people are more responsible for having to maintain more of their balance of energy they will hunt for ways to use less and make more on their own because it has direct financial benefit to them.
I believe in the silver BB's approach to reducing reliance on fossil fuel. Government and investment capital needs to stop trying to replace oil, NG and coal with technology X. Isn't going to happen. Invest instead in conservation approaches and on site energy capture.
This needs to be a 50 year, minimum, retooling of the United States. The Interstate highways took 50 years to build. The new transportation and energy system will take just as long but will be self sustainable when complete.
Over the 50 years it takes to get off oil and coal world population has to be allowed to decrease through lower birth rates matched with natural die off of elderly. If we stop having lots of children in 30-50 years 6 billion people will be die naturally at the end of their life span. At that time a smaller population can use the energy capture system that will have been built to maintain a stable population.
That's the vision. How do we convince moneyed and political interests to buy into that long term view at the expense of short term gain?
Those are all good suggestions...but I have two problems:
- Essentially, your thrust is to maintain the status quo. It seems to me that what is needed is a new societal paradigm, that is, one that leads away from a growth-based economy. Were this to occur, appropriate, necessary change will follow from it.
- A time-frame based upon change over a generation+ is unrealistic. I'm not even sure we have five years. My optimistic outlier is ten years.
ToddFurther, if we should really have a hard time before we can complete our investment in new infrastructure, then it will make finishing it that much harder. I think after the fall of Rome, civilization fell too far too fast, and look how long it took to dig its way back out.
"One cannot leap a great chasm in 2 bounds" - You either get to the other side in one, or you fall in the hole.
My approach might ( I stress might) if we really reduce fossil fuel consumption immediately. We can't go cold turkey the infrastructure won't allow it.
The problem I see is there is no real proactive plan to reduce consumption of fossil fuels. Until we try and power some things with renewable, and prove how little energy will be available, there will be no target for energy consumption per person to shoot for. I see too many people voicing the concept of using all the fossil fuels we want until it is well past peak and then we will shift to "the new energy sources". That approach is dangerous.
Better to force consumption now, and start using alternatives now, giving us some emergency stored fossil fuel to make the 50 year transition. This approach is really for the developed countries to implement. The third world doesn't consume that much fossil fuel except as food. The world needs to know there isn't the carrying capacity for 6.5 Billion people. Not enough energy, not enough food without the energy. What is the carrying capacity using renewables? I haven't a clue but we better find out soon.
The goal needs to be a planned steep decline in use of energy and population. The alternative is dropping off a cliff. Both energy and population will crash. We will end at the same place wether we engineer the decline or we crash. The difference is what is left of civilization via the two paths.
Renewables can provide more than enough. Wind in the US could generate twice the electricity we use now. The earth receives 100,000 terawatts of solar energy continously from the sun, and humans use the equivalent of 4.5 terawatts on average.
It's late so you may not see this before this thread goes to thread heaven.
We all want to believe that there are alternatives that will work. But, the reality is that homo sapiens are sucking every resource dry - water, aerable land, gas, oil, the sea, minerals, forests; everything.
It is a package deal. Gaia if you will. There are no magic answers. I say this from personal experience since I embraced alternative energy and a concern for sustaible living 30 years ago. I'm not into theoretical arguments about alternatives.
I'm not going to tell you are wrong because a change in reality only comes through experience.
Todd
Well, I agree that there are serious problems with all of these. I haven't had time to research all of them thoroughly. But TOD is dedicated to peak oil, and I have had time to research PO and energy thoroughly, and as far as I can tell peak oil is NOT peak energy. I find that encouraging.
"It is a package deal. Gaia if you will. There are no magic answers."
I'm not sure what you mean by this. It sounds a little...err...faith based. This seems unclear and fuzzy. I respect the role of intuition, but I find that I don't understand something in a clear way I get in trouble.
"I say this from personal experience since I embraced alternative energy and a concern for sustaible living 30 years ago."
I've been interested in these things for more than 30 years too, ever since I read the Club of Rome's report.
"I'm not into theoretical arguments about alternatives. I'm not going to tell you are wrong because a change in reality only comes through experience."
Well...talking about this, and learning from each other, is what we do here. I know there are people feeling pessimistic, but that alone doesn't really tell me whether that makes sense, or give me a chance to change your mind. I think you shouldn't give up on things, and that includes not giving up on communication - we can't come to a consensus on things unless we talk about them.
One thing that interests me about renewables is that there seems to be a tacit assumption that, because they're renewable, they don't have a significant downside to their use.
All that solar energy being dumped on the Earth isn't going to waste, for example. Much of it heats the atmosphere and the hydrosphere, which makes conditions amenable for life. I wonder what environmental changes would result if humanity were to capture a significant chunk of solar energy, say 10 or 20 percent (20,000 terawatts), and redirect it through technological infrastructure. Sure, waste heat would contribute to keeping things warm (perhaps too warm!), but it would be distributed through the atmsophere in a different way. Could be detrimental.
I wonder what harnessing 4.5 to 9.0 terawatts via wind energy would due to local environments? Wind turbines tap into fluid momentum, and must produce a lot of friction on airflow. On a massive scale, wind "farms" could, perhaps, alter local wind-climates (at the surface), which may also have some interesting effects on local ecosystems.
Just some ideas. I would like to see more deep thought on just what the true ramifications may be for a full-scale "power-up" on renewables.
-best
Yes, I provided that link a few days ago :
Sow the Wind, Reap the Drag Coefficient (Dept. of "We are as gods, and might as well get good at it")
The thing you have to keep in mind is that the solar energy is typically absorbed as heat now. The likely places for solar panels is existing structures. PV might change the albedo a little, but not a whole lot. There are a lot of buildings with dark roofs, which absorb a lot already - PV might actually absorb less.
Heat engines (coal, nat gas, gasoline ICE's) throw
off 3 units of heat for every unit of electricity generated. IF solar absorbed an additional .1 unit for every unit generated, that would be a 30 to 1 difference, and that doesn't even include the reduction in CO2 and global warming.
If you were really concerned, it wouldn't be a big deal to make some human structures a little lighter to compensate for a little more absorption at the solar panels. Really, the whole effect is negligible.
However, I think the change of albedo would become significant if the goal is to collect a high percentage of insolation. If, for instance, an attempt to collect 80-90% of total insolation was successful, then the Earth's albedo must change from it's estimate of around 0.30.
Anyway, I'll keep thinking...
-best
Sure. Of course, that would be about 20,000 times as much energy as we use now. I think it's safe to say that human energy use will level out a long time before that.
- I think Americans could learn to drive about 10% less by carpooling, combining trips, vacationing closer to home, and god-forbid maybe even taking some trips on foot or bike.
- Reinstitue the 55 mph speed limit.
- Use the A/C in the car less.
These three steps could bring an immediate 10 to 20% reduction in gasoline use and could buy us a few years to make longer term and more dramatic changes such as:- increased electric rail in cities and towns.
- dramatic reductions in personal automobile use.
- returning to rail and river as the main means of shipping.
- slowly migrating out of the suburbs and megalopolises and back into our small cities and towns. My little town alone (pop. 15000) has 500,000 sq ft of unused space above the shops of our 6 or 7 block downtown retail district. In the 19th century, these were used as apartments. Today no one lives there bc/ of the lack of parking, but they could very easily be converted back to 500 or so housing units without any new construction. These floors are literally just sitting empty or maybe store the owner's junk. On several of our streets, the rails that haven't been used by electric trolleys in 60 years are still in place.
I see the "powerdown" as a return to a late 19th century standard of living. Lots of walking, mass transit, a substantially increased percentage of people working in agriculture, less cross country and international travel. more river and rail transport.The future may look a lot like the past:
I remember sharing rides being fairly common in the 70s when I was a kid. If one person had a car, there were several people who knew them and a ride for the one person into town often ended up being a ride into town for a couple of their pals too. In fact a person would be considered standoffish, greedy/cold if they always drove by themself. We'd have really been hurting without welfare though. As 'rough' as my memories of the dirty 70s, are, they'll be nothing compared to the 2nd great depression coming up.
Also, reinstating the 55 mph limit will not necessarily make people drive 55 mph. I actually think the limit has little bearing on how fast people actually drive.
My car's a darkish color and heats up quite a bit, I have to run the AC once the outside temperature exceeds 75F! I could avoid using the AC a lot more if it were a much lighter color, and didn't have a huge expanse of black dashboard under the sloping windshield. Anyone who has a Prius knows what I mean.
The A/C unit aboard a car will use up energy if for no other reason being that it causes the engine to have a faster idle. That causes the gas mileage drop. With my Kia Rio of Year 2001 the car has the mpg as above. 28 in winter and 24.5 in summer. Aggressive driving is no help! :)
It's easy to combine trips on a commuting mission. You can stop off at this or that mall on a mission home but you still use that damn gas for the mission home. That is the problem for the commuter. I use 3 fifths of gas each way as of now. I will use two fifths each way once I move. In a push-come-to-shove case, I will be able to use a bus as a "booster rocket" to get a bicycle toward where I work.
It's plenty about time that suburbanitic people think in terms of gas use instead of "minutes". That is, "gallons away" or "liters away". See above, and I think in terms of a "fifth" with the gas! Just yesterday, I saw a gas station with a sign of $3.76-and-the-9 a gallon. One penny short of a buck a liter. That was for the premium stuff. Buck a liter gas is coming, like it or not.
That with suburbanitic people thinking in terms of "minutes away" has always escaped me. The assumption is always that you use a car. If you don't always use a car, miles (or kilometers) becomes the better measure of distance. Time will depend on distance and transit use, and your walking. If you walk fast, you get to reduce travel time.
I would imagine the grids are contructed whereas to spend as little money as possible to keep it going. Just my thoughts! It's all about the money!
When we first built it, we never imagined the load we would one day put on it, nor how dependent upon it we would eventually be. That makes it hard to rebuild and repair the system.
What they could not imagine were probably that the electricity distribution companies would neglect to continue invest and build upon their exelent system and that people at large would stop necessery investments due to NIMBY.
There is an old Swedish farmers saying for this that litteraly translates "To live on rust and rot", that is neglecting to maintain and reinvest in your houses and equipment and letting them wear down. An existance for retiering people withouth heirs, for people who dont care much about the future.
Then there's the Internet. I doubt anyone foresaw today's giant server farms in the '60s, let alone the '30s.
The 800 kV level were proposed and planned for in the 70:s to interconnect the nuclear powerplants in southern Sweden and it would then probably have started to replace 220 kV and 400 kV lines. The proposal died in the general technology scepticism following the nuclear power debate. There are rumours that a lot of the 400 kV poles installed in the 80:s are prepaired for lenghtening for a future conversion to 800 kV.
There must surely have been a simmilar development in the USA for your numerous coal and nuclear powerplants built in the 60:s and 70:s. It would be quite odd if the backbone of your grid were fromn the about a 100 kV era.
The building of main grid lines have been a slow addition of DC-links, upgrades of old 220 kV lines and a few new short 400 kV lines for better redundancy after the building boom during the height of our nuclear investments. Investments are planned to increase to facilitate more power trading and more redundancy. I have heard no rumours about 800kV upgrades but it is undecided if a new major link in southern Sweden should be 400 kV overhead line or a HVDC cable. There is also a major reworking of the Stockholm power distribution underway. But we are not especially different from you, this would probably not have happened if we not had had a few major outtages showing that that the redundancy were incomplete and the grid did not deliver the expected quality of service. I am afraid that proactive maintainance and investment needs an accident now and then, hopefully one can learn from others mistakes.
As I drive home on my commute, I get to see (and marvel at) a substation. You have the "extreme" voltage transmission lines go to it, then it feeds huge transformers and it has giant capacitors to even out power factor. The conductors between the parts are exposed pieces of pipe.
In downtown Chicago, the extreme voltage power is carried underground. But that takes heavy-duty insulation on the wiring. Possible all right, but not cheap. Even a "mere" 4,200 volts takes some impressive insulation on the wires. It's way cheaper to have exposed cable on towers for long range power transmission - despite lossiness.
This is due to a cables higher capacitance to ground. During a period this capacitance is charged and if the cable is long enough it is time to reverse the current flow when the cable is fully charged leaving no power to extract for doing work at the other end. (Not a very good explanation :-( )
An overhead cable also have better natural cooling then an insulated cable making it possible to run a higher currant thru the same gauge of conducting metal.
Making it possible to use long cables and to exchange power between unsyncronized AC grids were the original reasons for developing HVDC. It is also more efficient for very long overhead power lines due to the same unsensitivity to the lines capacitance.
Also as the voltage goes up so do the corona losses (the slight crackle you can hear and the blue glow on wet nights). The extent of corona lines depends on electric field strength near the conductors and the smaller the conductor the higher the field strength at its surface. Very high voltage lines use multiple strands on each phase separated by spacers to approximate a larger diameter conductor and so lower the electric field strength.
The number of strands is increased as the voltage rises. This shows a four strand conductor. You would need to upgrade the conductors as well as the insulators if you increased the voltage.
Yeah, the raft of 1U servers I have in the Portland Maine colo all have 450 watt power supplies. I've never understood what that means in terms of real power draw - except that power draw in not something the manufacturers want to reduce - they would rather bragg about it.
I'm in process of replacing all the servers in my local office with laptops and mean to get John Howe to spec me out a solar system to keep them going on 12v. I'll be able to sleep at night knowing all the servers in the colo are backed up with honking diesels. Grrr.
Lots of local electronics ought to run quite nicely on 12 or 24 vdc.
I do NOT know what the load of a 24x7 server with a 450 watt power supply really is. Except that to it one must add a lot of air conditioning. Does anyone have good numbers?
cfm
But for standard operational use they're almost always connected to the local electricity companies. Some are connected to several, with redundant feeds coming in at opposite ends of the building.
From News.com:
Wow! However, consider that this is the "world's largest data center." Census.gov says the population of Honolulu was about 380,000. So by their estimate, each person in a city draws almost 500 watts. They don't say exactly how many square feet the installation was, but assuming the warehouse area was half the land area, it would be roughly 3.75 million sq. ft. This gives a power draw of almost 50 watts per square foot.
Then from a Charlotte newspaper:
OK, but vague with no mention of the size of such a farm.
The New York Times wrote in April 2001:
This sounds questionable, if the "world's largest" farm draws only the same amount. Where can you find 174 acres in the South Bronx??
This last number is obviously an editing error: 100 kilowatts per square foot would set the installation on fire in seconds! They meant 60 - 100 watts.
This is confirmed by Armory Lovins:
So 60 watts/sq. ft sounds like a reasonable ballpark number. What would an "average" data farm be, though? A 100x250 foot building filled with computers sounds pretty darn big to me, but by these numbers it would only draw 1.5 megawatts - a "city" of about 3000 people.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/14/technology/14search.html?ex=1307937600&en=d96a72b3c5f91c47& ;ei=5090
Repairs and upgrades cost a phenomenal amount more.
I've run an internet service provider since 1994. Every year new competition would come online with new boxes that at half the cost and twice the power. I'd be supporting existing clients with legacy technology. Every upgrade was difficult and pissed off existing users. New clients would wonder why our system didn't work out of the box like new systems.
Ultimately, we realized it was cheaper to break and fix, just like the grid repairs. Shut down, redo, restart. Put the phones on hold and do it as fast as possible. There is no way to migrate everyone smoothly. From day 1 we thought internet access was a telco or cable job, so we went after the online commerce. But the same thing happened. We're on version 3 of our catalog system and may never get to version 4 because the transition will be impossibly complex and expensive. Too many interdependencies. And our competition is running on commodity sofware and hardware. Less capable but decoupled. I wonder how google deals with the Tainter problems?
Whether it's the highway system, the grid, just-in-time grain supplies, our economy as a whole - less energy (which is same as less expense) is going to force decentralization. So when the grid goes down, it won't be as much of it that goes down. A lot of the internet is like that, but the new COPE act, CALEA and surveillance provisions are driving it into a much more complex - and therefore unreliable - position. How human!
Our oil infrastructure underlies everything; it's highly complex and modern economics has stripped all the redundancy. One tanker taken out by a rocket on the high seas - what would that do to the system?
It seems impossible to replace oil with another more costly alternative at a lower EROEI point that will require an even larger, more complex and more costly infrastructure. The expense of alternatives and conversion to them is nearly unthinkable; the only real alternative is to back down the complexity. Anything that depends on building more technological infrastructure is not going to work until we decouple and decentralize.
cfm
Unfortunately, the transition periods can be very violent and wrenching, and a smaller population is ultimately supported.
oops.
-marku
I pledge allegiance, to the flags,
Of the Divided States of America,
And to the Republics, for which they stand,
50 Nations, under Greed, further divisible,
with poverty and injustice, for most.
I developed that not-such-a-pledge back last century!
I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stood, one nation under the almighty dollar, divided, with liberty and justice for those who can afford it.
I pledge allegiance to the United States of Adam Smith and to the Republican Finger which they obey, one global economy, under Gold, indivisble, with profits and corporate liberty for those who can afford it. Amen.
The big cost is the man hours for designing, producing, assembling and testing the satellite, its custom instruments and the launcher.
The sensetive part is probaly if something would stop those workers from working and not move closer to work during a powerdown scenario and if manny producers of parts and subassmeblies goes bankrupt and wont restart buisness with new owners due to having the bulk of their business in other areas with low demand.
But a tenfold increase in metal prices and a hundredfold increase in rocket fuel cost will not stop launching of essential satelites.
If you worry about the above scenarios get the satellite, rocket and key subasembley manufacturers to increase the ammount of in-house work and move suppliers closer to the main factories. Use non in-house electronics and so on with a solid demand in the civilian and military sector. And plan for building some nice neighbourhoods close to the factories perhaps even staring on them.
The proof for this being possible is in Indias space program when India were much poorer then today.
But it is of course possible for a military industrial complex to prioritize away the production of vital services and fuble the means to assure fulfilling long term contracts. But that is not an energy problem, its a management, politics and smart customers problem.
Electricity distrubution technology advances at a snails pace compared with computers and slapped togeather software standards such as HTML and its numerous backends. I do not find it meaningfull to compare those technologies. Making a grid redundant is a straightforward technical job where almost everything is known. The electricity users demand more reliability, slowely add more overtone noise and like to buy more power but they do not build vast mazes of tangled wiering such as the hodgepodges of online systems.
It should be easy, customers are demanding better services are probably willing to pay for it, the technology is known, you basically only have to actually make the investments and send the bills. If your grid goes down its becouse you are stupid, not becouse of some complexity natural law.
Hardly no one have had better resources to build and run a gold plated 99.99% 24/7 grid then USA. And you are still rich, fix it or bleed!
If it were up to me, I would. I think investing in infrastructure is a great thing to do to prepare for peak oil. It ain't going to get any cheaper or easier after TSHTF.
But we've known the grid is a problem for at least 20 years, and haven't done squat about it.
I thought for sure they'd finally get moving after the Blackout of 2003, where half the country and part of Canada went dark. But no, our Congresscritters talked about fixing the grid for about a week after the blackout, then did nothing.
If that blackout wasn't enough to get them moving, nothing is.
This prompted a complete reanalysis of the Nordic grids and a revision of the common standards. The basic goal is to weather one N-1 during maximum (winter) load and then another one after the 15 minutes it takes to get the spare gas turbines on line. (An N-1 is the at any time most loaded powerplants, powerline, transformer or busbar going down. )
The freak accident seems to have led to about a doubling of the maintainance pace of the switchyards but I dont know if and how they have solved this kind of sensitivity to arces blowing in an unfortunate direction. And I am only 90% sure since I have not cheked the budget and yearly reports from the authority running our HV grid but they use to do what they plan.
The larger investments in redundancy will take a few more years before they are done, they are slowed down by NIMBY politics. And I guess the old work for making the major powerplants able to go to house turbine running have continued, not all of them weatherd this disturbance and thus took extra time to get on line.
Perhaps this is helped by the political dynamics of the grid spanning several countries? We do not accept wekanesses in our neighbours powerlines taking our grid down and vice versa. Chould not Canada put preassure on you?
"Whether it's the highway system, the grid, just-in-time grain supplies, our economy as a whole - less energy (which is same as less expense) is going to force decentralization."
DEcentralize. Not even the United States will remain United before this Storm ends.
Become a Micro Utility and focus on your Profoundly Locale as the Kunst's man sayeth ;). Your Local World will beat a path to your door (and you will get sick of it and have to hire someone to deal with the putzes).
One of the reasons that the grid is rickety is that "politics" makes it hard to expand it.
The focus needs to be on demand management, not grid expansion.
But power companies now have a challenge. If we add in electrified rail you need more capacity - and better reliability. Consider the idea of trolley buses. If there's a blackout, you cause traffic jams as the buses "die" and are marooned in the middle of the street. That is, unless the buses have emergency diesel generators onboard. (or at least a battery pack to pull to the side)
Back in the 1990s I had in my studio apartment a computer UPS plus a pair of marine batteries, becuse of frequent nuisance blackouts. A "nuisance blackout" is a blackout that lasts an hour or two. I used the UPS as a complete apartment battery backup system. With e-rail or e-buses as above, even a nuisance blackout will cause problems for commuters.
So, if we go with e-transit we will need a better, more reliable grid, not one made as damn cheaply as possible. While Germans like good engineering, we Yanks tend toward making everything as damn "economically" i.e. as cheap, as possible. And our power grid shows that tendancy.
California is the case of needing e-transit the most but the power grid is the least reliable. Remember Y2K1? California is the WORST place to add e-transit yet they need e-transit the most!
If I was a homeowner, I would love to have a hybrid car. That way, I could use the car as a temporary powerplant in a blackout. Kind of the plug-in hybrid in reverse.
We Yanks, in our various governmental boxes -- city, county, state and national -- are largely limited by statutes requiring acceptance of a lowest bid, and by habit in commercial situations. Exceptions to low bid in a governmental context tend to have adverse political fallout. Oversight of contractors usually falls to accountants, attorneys, and politicos, not engineers. Low bid also places contractors in the position of having to risk cutting corners to stay on budget and/or on time. The problems uncovered in consequence of a death in Boston's "Big Dig" may be seen as an example of the dangers of exclusively low bid contracts.
Better to be a German...
Asian cars seem to be the only quality ones these days.
I'm so poor I owe the bank $5,000
To which his friend replies:
I'm so rich I owe the bank $500,000
The Germans had their chance, but happily failed. They had their chance to be a superpower but failed along the way. They had submarine vehicles, ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, but happily not a nuke. They were working on it but happily they they failed.
"Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and the two Roosevelts would probably have been appalled. Politics and government down through the ages, while often brutal or grossly deficient, have been the subject matter of Plato and Aristotle, Aquinas and Machiavelli, Locke, and a few of America's own great names. Markets, by contrast, descend from fairs of late medieval Europe, church-permitted safety valves for gambling, money-lending, and other forms of license. The idea that they have turned into a vehicle for human governance lacks any base beyond the occasional financial publication." ---Kevin Phillips, Wealth and Democracy (New York, 2002), p 417-418.
Electric cars
Not so shocking
Jul 27th 2006 | SANTA MONICA
From The Economist print edition
High-tech entrepreneurs unveil a sporty electric car
ASK people if they would buy a new electric car and most will respond blankly. After all, electric cars have not been seen in large numbers for nearly a century, and the golf carts and milk floats that represent electrified transport today are hardly the sort of vehicle to win many people over.
And don't terminate it the first time you drive it
Tesla Motors aims to alter that perception. The venture, based in California and financed by Elon Musk, the founder of PayPal, and Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the co-founders of Google, has unveiled a two-seat sports car. It will cost $89,000, and Tesla aims to sell a couple of thousand of them before introducing a cheaper, four-seat version.
The car's design alone is likely to turn old-fashioned notions of electric vehicles on their head. Beyond that, Tesla makes three audacious claims. The first is that the vehicle accelerates from nought to 100km (60 miles) per hour in just four seconds. That is faster than a Ferrari. The second is that it can travel 400km on an overnight charge from an ordinary 240 volt socket. The third is that it is more environmentally friendly than a petrol-driven equivalent.
There is no doubting its breathtaking quickness. And the range of 400km is a heroic accomplishment, made possible by the use of advanced lithium-ion batteries and lightweight carbon-fibre bodywork. Dr Musk, the firm's chairman, concedes that racing Ferraris all the time would reduce the range somewhat, but points out that, using the American government's methodology, the car's fuel efficiency is the equivalent of 52.5km per litre of petrol (135 miles per American gallon). The average new American car gets less than 12km per litre.
The grand claims of greenery might sound a bit fishy, given that most electricity is made from fossil fuels, but several studies have shown that electric vehicles which draw their power from a grid that is itself half coal-fired (as America's is) produce less in the way of greenhouse gases than an average petrol-driven car.
Tesla, though, aims to be even greener than that, according to Dr Musk. The firm plans to offer optional solar-photoelectric systems, to be set up as a car port at home, that will be able to power the cars for 80km a day without having to draw on the grid. Given that the average driver travels less than this, the idea promises, as Dr Musk puts it, to "make our cars energy positive"--for those with Santa Monica's reliable sunshine, at least.
There was one gripe, though. Some of the petrolheads at Tesla's launch party complained that the silence of the electric motor was too alien. They missed the grunt and growl of an internal-combustion engine. A Tesla engineer nearby came back with an idea: "We'll program the software to have a variety of engine roars, just like ring tones on mobile phones."
Cheers,
RR
If batteries are $10, then less than one seventh of a barrel of crude :)
If you ask me this makes it to neither of them. IMO it would be much better idea release 2 models targeted at each group.
That's a minor hassle in a laptop or MP3 player. A much bigger deal when you have 6000 of them.
I'm surprised you can charge it overnight via a wall socket. That's gotta give you one hell of a whack on your electricity bill. I wonder if it works out cheaper or more expensive right now?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium_ion_battery
Specifically they age from the time of manufacture, and their usable working life can be dramatically lowered by the way in which they are recharged.
Your $10/battery cost is high.
They put 6,000 batteries in the car to get the 250 mile range. No, most people do not need that range. Yes, the batteries are one of the biggest costs in the Tesla.
The cheap electric car for the masses will happen. All that has to change is for folks to realize that they don't need 250 mile range for their commuter car. $4.00/gallon gas will help them understand this. Even though battery technology is improving, cars with lead acid batteries will also work when the mileage requirement is lessened. That is a psychology problem.
Andrew
There are still a lot of these behemoth Ford and Mercury wagons around, because they were excellent cars in the first place and often owned by older people who still give them tender loving care.
CAFE killed them off. Though the mileage on these big cars was surprisingly good, "average mileage" under CAFE could be raised by making SUVs ("trucks") rather than cars that got less than twenty-five miles a gallon. (By going only 55 mph, I was able to get slightly more than twenty miles a gallon, even with a fully loaded Mercury Grand Marquis wagon with the grand old Ford five-liter engine in it.)
You get used to the unique noise e-vehicles make during use. That e- sports car would not sound "alien" at all. I personally wouldn't bother with the "engine noise" add-on played through the stereo. One thing that would bother me is regenerative braking, if done wrong. Where I work, we have a batch of Toyota e-forklifts. The newest one has regenerative braking. When you let off on the "gas" it jerks to a stop. I much prefer a DC motor and its "glide" when taking your foot off the "gas". Oddly enough, sometimes we rent out propane forklifts. THOSE get taking used to after you get hooked on the electric ones!
But then it was only last week that I watched a Daily Planet repeat about how Ford engineers had spent millions on getting "exactly the right note" for their F150 truck...
Quote: customers would only buy if it had the "macho engine/exhaust noise"... but wasn't too intrusive ..
There's just no hope for car companies who are stuck in this paradigm...
http://media.mitsubishi-motors.com/pressrelease/e/corporate/detail1321.html
To Editors:
Another thing for suggestion pot: the definition of a standard collection of data points for a geographical entity. Post these somewhere on TOD.
Population, housing units, miles of road, miles of railroad, average income, hours worked, miles commuted, kw generated, sources of same, etc.... What should be in it? What level of detail - I would think towns - cities might have multiple "neighborhoods".
If I want to compare Swiss cantons with *transportation corridors* or perhaps *bioregions* (eg, a comparison of different geographical entities) in Maine, a normalized data set would really help, wouldn't it? Would it be only oil or all energy sources or oil vs percentage of total, etc.... There must be something on which we can piggyback. This data is all (or almost all) available online already elsewhere in bits and pieces - it's more a matter of specifying the organization for our own porpoises. Then we could parcel off the work to people in different locations around the world. I'll do Maine, US.
cfm
Flaws in EROEI: Why 1:1.2 could be just fine
If a project has a negative EROEI, it can only be beneficial if it is converting a lower value fuel (ie. coal) to a higher value fuel (ie. gasoline). However, once EROIE is positive, it gets much more complex. It is not possible to look at one project that is 1:3 and say it is better than one that is 1:2. Here is why:
1) The energy turnover period also makes a difference - at least from an investment standpoint
If one project has an EROEI of 1:1.2, but can be done 50 times per year, it may produce more energy than one that has an EROEI of 1:1.5 but can only be done once. If corn ethanol has an EROEI of 1:1.2 but turns the initial investment over frequently enough, it can produce quite a lot of energy.
If you take the same ratios, but harvest twice as often, your energy input may double and your energy output may double, but your investment stays the same since the harvests are sequential. It's continual compounding.
The process looks like this:
Invest one unit
Get back 1.2 units
Invest 1.2 units
Get back 1.44 units
Invest 1.44 units
Get back 1.73 units
Etc.
2) Using ethanol as the fuel input
As long as EROIE is positive, you can create whatever ratio you want by using ethanol itself as the energy feedstock. If all of the trucks that shipped ethanol and all of the machinery that worked the fields were run on ethanol, it would reduce both the numerator and the denominator equally and the ratio would go up.
However, it would make absolutely no difference. The reduction in gasoline used would be offset by the reduction in ethanol produced. But it is important to realize that if you wanted to create an elaborate system of fooling EROEI, you could.
This brings up the question of why don't ethanol producers use ethanol fueled machinery and transport. The answer is because no one makes ethanol fueled tractors or suitable trucks and it would be inefficient to use custom made equipment.
As long as a project is EROEI positive and the inputs can be substituted with ethanol, you can theoretically get the EROEI number as high as you want.
We're burning through our trust fund now like there's no tomorrow. Once it's gone, getting a job at McDonald's won't make up for it, no matter how many hours we work. It may be "money positive," but it won't keep us in the style to which we have become accustomed.
Invest one unit
Get back 1.2 units
Invest 1.2 units
Get back 1.44 units
Invest 1.44 units
Get back 1.73 units
In reality it would look more like:
Invest one unit
Get back 1.2 units
Invest one unit
Get back 1.2 units
....
You can not grow exponentially your invesments because the other limitations of the system will soon kick in - land&water availability, labour, better alternative use of land etc.
The turnover point is important. Ethanol would look much better if we could harvest corn 3-4 times a year. But we can't and therefore a CTL plant would be a better idea, though technically it's EROEI is twice lower (0.6 vs 1.2). The lower yield is offset by the fact that we invest much less resources per unit of output per day. The way to think about is if we have a 30% efficient solar panel, which costs $100/rated Watt and a 6% efficient panel which costs $4/rated Watt. Which one will we choose?
The reason ethanol from corn will never make it without the subsidies is that the low energetic yeild needs to cover all other expenses - labor, capital costs etc. But converting our corn surplus to ethanol may be a viable idea (to some extent).
In contrast, to get the corn for ethanol you need to invest a lot of fuel even before it gets to the conversion plant. An EROI calculation is tricky: it has to be a closed loop, or the equivalent of one, so you can see how much end-use energy you get from investing a unit of same, or equivalent, into producing it. Energy "quality" must also be taken into account (e.g., electricity is far better than coal). (But ethanol is not better than corn, because you can't eat the ethanol. Well you can drink small amounts of it...)
Adjusting nuclear/renewable energy would be more tricky but as a reference we can adjust it by the coal burnt it displaces. If a coal plant is 40% efficient this means that 1BTU of electricity is equivelent to 1*0.6/0.4 = 1.5 BTU of liquid fuel.
Overall this will improve a little bit the EROEI of ethanol, especially if coal is used for ethanol destillation. But in this case GHG-wise ethanol is definately a very bad idea.
Invest one unit
Get back 1.2 units
Invest one unit
Get back 1.2 units
If you want to be realistic you need to label the units
Invest one unit fossil fuel
Get back 1.2 units ethanol
Invest one unit ethanol
Get back 1.2 units ethanol
...
...
If you are recyclying the ethanol you get back a 0.2 units net each year. After 20 years, roughly the lifecycle of a windmill for comparison, this yields 5 units of ethanol from the original unit of fossil fuel (if you dont' recycle the last year) That 1.2 EROEI doesn't sound that bad after all.
Regarding the "fossil fuel use" it is truth that coal is not unlimited. But are you trying to tell me ethanol production would be unlimited? What about soil fertility, water availability etc.? How long will it last? Much shorter than coal I can tell you.
Even if you had an EROEI of 2, that would mean that for every gallon of ethanol you get from growing and processing the corn, half of it never leaves the farm. With EROEI=1.2, this rises to 80%. As pointed out earlier, this is not a problem if you have unlimited farmland.
This is also of importance when considering the energy available from the tar sands in Alberta, since recovering oil from that is both energy and water intensive.
In the same vein, I thought I'd repost my reply to 'Jack' on this very subject that got somewhat lost toward the end of the Vinod Khosla thread.
---------------------
Jack -
I agree that by using the total output of the first ethanol plant as the input to a larger ethanol plant, etc, etc, in a piggy-backing manner, you can make the 'apparent' EROEI appear quite favorable.
However, the analogy between financial compound interest and energy return is imperfect and can be only taken so far. One always has to be very careful how and where one draws the envelope of analysis.
If you put pencil to paper, you will also see that as you go through several such iterations, the ratio of the amount of ethanol actually leaving the system and thus available FOR USE AS A TRANSPORTATION FUEL to the amount of corn input actually gets lower and lower. (Try it.)
What this means is that a self-sustaining ethanol- from-corn scheme will use an enormous amount of corn to produce relatively little fuel for actual use in transportation. It is somewhat paradoxical that as the EROEI goes up in such a piggy-backing scheme, the efficiency of corn usage goes down.
And it won't do to say that it doesn't matter how great the corn input is, because, as we all know, even devoting the entire US corn production to ethanol will only replace a relatively small fraction of our current gasoline usage.
For those who don't understand the financial impact or who are curious about what hedge funds do, this has a lot of good information.
http://www.newstatesman.com/200607310033
Stagflation anyone...?
http://www.breitbart.com/news/2006/07/28/D8J50IGO0.html
SOMEONE here has to have some good data on this or at least a good idea if this is a reality. Sounds far too easy IMHO. Sulfur to solve our problems? How about the high sulfur oil?
http://www.livescience.com/environment/060727_inject_sulfur.html
Maybe America DOES get it. Check out this piece about people transforming their garages into kitchens and other additonal spaces. Then again it is designer kitchens apparently.
http://biz.yahoo.com/special/luxury072706_article1.html
Sometimes I wish the trees could inherit this rock in space..
now raise your hand if you actualy think someone will try this, then try to cover up or downplay the acid rain that follows.
True, but think of the energetics involved. Millions of tons of sulfur every year or two injected a good 10-18 km high (and that's just to get to the bottom of the stratosphere). How are we going to get it up there? How much energy would it take?
Re: high sulfur oil. Terrible idea. That sulfur remains in the troposphere, where residence times are more like 1-2 weeks. It will then come down as acid rain.
What if instead of making a big mess and then looking for bandaids to fix said mess we don't make such a mess in the first place? And if we have a mess, what if we deal with the cause instead of covering over the symptoms?
How about both less global warming and atmospheric pollution?
Best
(I want an ice age, no I want global warming, but I want warm temps, and I want cool temps.<GBG>)
It is technically feasible and practical. It would give us time to try to get our act together before things really get seriously bad.
This is what scares me about the Global Warming RED HERRING.
The Quacks who suggest tampering with the atmosphere are the Biggest Danger to our species and our planet since the last Astroid.
Be very, Very afraid of your godz of PoliTICs, Science and Technology. These pathetically Ignorant Child-Priests in our Ivory Towers are Playing with Matches again and are going to burn down the Whole Barn...
Desperate Madmen in search of an answer at the End of The Exam... ("TimezUp - passss testsss to the right pleaZe," Says Mother Nature).
But then again, I guess the Clown Priests of Science are part of this Very Natural Process too I guess. Carry on Mother...
I haven't read the actual article so I don't know if he's being taken out of context. If it's accurate, then it would be very sad indeed. Then I can only guess he's hit a point of despair (he's been beating this drum for a long time) and is left reaching for desperate measures.
-- George Orwell, "Politics and the English Language," 1946
IF you think humans are going to control the planet's thermostat and steer This Civilization through "Global Warming," then YOU are the one who is "clearly not thinking at all."
You try and change "your" local weather and what do you think your neighbors will do?
By neighbors, I mean START with Your Personal Neighbors and work all the way up to State Neighbors etc (Global Village, remember ?).
Mother Nature is IN the House!. She (deaf, dumb and blind girl) is in Control of the Thermostat - sorry.
Nature will continue to be... Pandora's box ~ another cliche metaphor for your Religion.
(hey, how many neighbors does it take to get a Small Wind Turbine in Your Yard???? ....
Depends ... on PoliTICS
... good luck with your Religion of Politicz and the Scientist-Priests you seem to Trust In... oh, and their Technology too, = almost like the Four Horsemen type of thing snuck in the back door on Homo Sap).
"No, I got what you were driving at, and for the record I don't think civilization is going to survive (and I don't think that's a bad thing, either--see my Thirty Theses or the discussion here on my work from earlier this month). But I chose not to address the substance of your post..."
My impression has also been that the global financial system is very unstable - it depends on continued growth and on not having any sharp discontinuities. Once there is a sudden shock, or the realization that growth will not continue indefinitely, the system is likely to come unglued very quickly.
What are some good sources to read other people's ideas about this? It seems like there are write ups in some of the peak oil books like Jeremy Leggett's "The Empty Tank" and Matt Simmons' "Twilight in the Desert". What are some other sources? Are there write-ups about what actually happened in Argentina a few years ago, or in other non-communist states that have had sudden failures of the system?
"It takes 20,000 Americans working at $10 and hour--or 1,300 Mexicans at $3 a day--to generate enough profits to support one Leona Helmsley during the off-season alone. The rich, in short, are a terrible burden on the rest of us."
That's peak in my book.
I really meant that it is plausible our financial system will get in serious trouble at some point and start "unwinding".
For instance the derivatives market along with the activities of currency speculation has been a concern for some time. The phrases "unstable" and "unsustainable" get thrown around a lot in discussions about these things.
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/7/28/64931/5032
This would be a great way to set up more regional light rail in Northern NJ and commuter areas in New York.
Does anyone know why there is no passenger rail between NYC and Eastern PA. Easton, Allentown and Bethlehem are only 75 miles from the city and the only way to get to the city is by bus or personal automobile.
I wrote to Gov. Corzine and asked him to fund it.
Can anyone tell me what valid purpose is served by this farrago of false analogy? Oil is not the least like milk -- if you need a glass of milk a day, "don't buy a cow, buy a refrigerator", etc.
Pretty clearly both the cow and the refrigerator need oil inputs in the current economic system. China bets that they can purchase oil-bearing strata and they will be able to hold them --a somewhat dubious proposition. The Bloomberg "economists" imagine that some kind of "free market" will magically transport oil where it is needed.
Both strategies imply some kind of (increasingly) forceful, undoubtedly militaristic and violent -- and as we are seeing-- increasingly obvious control system. But don't call it "imperialism." It is "unipolar hegemony."
Another good example of the Danger of Democracy... government by "the People" is a noble idea but not necessarily a very good one.
"Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard. "" H.L Menckan
It never ceases to amaze me that "green" people can't see the consequences of reigning in gasoline prices. The result will not be green. If you look around the world, the places that we would consider really green have really high gas prices.
Cheers,
RR
Not that I think there's even a ghost of a chance of this happening.
No other country uses such a method.
two universes alien to each other:
Amtrak railways: a railway system on the East coast that works o.k. and
Amtrak rail cruises - a ridiculous vestige of times past.
Only politics keeps them together. Amtrak railways could do better alone.
For example, the Hiawatha Service between Milwaukee and Chicago carried over 500,000 passengers in calendar year 2005 for the first time ever. The Hiawatha will approach 600,000 passengers this year. It helps that the Hiawatha's on-time peformance is well over 90% (thanks in large part to the cooperation of the host railroad Canadian Pacific). Last year the state of Wisconsin opened a new station at Milwaukee's airport (with a shuttle bus between the train station and the airport terminal), the Village of Sturtevant (near Racine, WI) is about to open a new station, and a public/private partnership has begun redeveloping the downtown Milwaukee station into an intermodal terminal also serving Greyhound and local transit.
The state of Illinois is contributing significant new funds to add train frequencies on their Chicago-Quincy, Chicago-St. Louis, and Chicago-Carbondale routes. They are also working on improvements to the Chicago-St. Louis corridor that will someday allow train speeds up to 110-mph. St. Louis has just begun developing a new intermodal station, too.
The state of Michigan and Amtrak are working on improvements that will allow faster travel on the Chicago-Detroit line.
Looking longer term, nine Midwestern states have developed a plan for implementing a 3,000-mile high-speed rail service hubbed out of Chicago (see Midwest Regional Rail Initiative link on Wisconsin DOT's website).
Other parts of the country are looking at regional high-speed rail service as well.
And it's always a quick and easy trip to the airport?
Well that is not the whole article is it?
Yeah, I am not so comfortable with ExxonMobil determining my future as well as them making out like bandits. Their denial of GW and funding of anti GW propaganda as a case in point.
How can they say that!!! They have no idea why we should keep depending on oil. Oil is forever, abiotic I mean, right? Damn this stuff is going to keep increasing for forty years right?
What no killing people, just what kind of guys does he think we are? Where is my gun!!
I guess one word explains it... COMMIE!With all the graphs, charts, flows of important news, etc., it's easy to lose the larger picture of what is going on vis a vis peak oil.
According to Chris Skrobowski, et al, we know that massive amounts of oil are expected from deep sea oil from last year through the end of the decade. Based on this, many of these experts are predicting oil edging up to 90 MB/day or even more, before peaking around 2010.
Yet looking at Stuart Staniford's charts (which are probably the best real time snapshot we have available), we see that world production is basically flat, with a very slight upward movement. (And that upward movement might be because of a late addition of ethanol and biofuels to the IEA statistical mix).
So what does this mean?
It looks like non-deep sea oil production is doing terrible, with depletion rates probably closer to Schlumberger's "8%" than Dr. Colin Campbell's "2-3%". Which means we can probably expect a wicked production slump after 2010.
Any comments?
What about it, Big Boys? If global oil production creeps up to 90 and plateaus for a few years, but the new production is costing much more in energy to extract, then the NET oil coming out is necessarily in decline!
e.g. if it takes half a barrel of oil to produce a barrel of shale oil, then you actually need two barrels of shale oil to replace one depleted Saudi barrel. Something like that.
Is there any way to account for this in those fancy graphs?
Then you add in ethanol's EROI of 1.3:1, factor in the fact that much of the Energy Invested comes from non-liquid sources, some comes from non-fossil sources, and the calculation get even worse.
We know that light sweet has peaked, barring a miraculous recovery, and that is the stuff with the best EROI. To me, that is a proxy for the effective peak, and we passed that peak a few years ago. About the same time, prices started relentlessly marching up. Coincidence? I think not. I think "Peak Net Oil" has come and gone, and we are left to scrounge through the increasingly lower EROI hydrocarbon left overs.
As Mike Lynch is so fond of pointing out, there are 10's of trillions of barrels of hydrocarbons known to be still left in the ground. I predict we will extract at least that much before EROI reaches 1:1, but Peak NET Oil will eventually be reckoned to be around the year 2001.
OPEC seems to have plateaued, if not actually in decline, and is running its pumps full out. Since it is no longer the swing producer in any positive sense (as opposed to the negative sense of being able to shut down in the event of war), why view it differently than FSU or North Sea?
Since Deep Sea seems to be the only expanding sector with possible extra capacity, it would make sense to look at this in conjunction/contrast to non-Deep Sea.
Or, DS vs. NDS
I'm no good at graphing, but I'd love to see a chart showing deep sea separated out in this manner.
Far-sighted lawmakers! A rare thing.
It seems they want to keep about 50 years' worth of production in front of them, at all times. i.e. adjusting production upwards or (more surely) downwards in function in changes in reserves.
If all oil producers did that, what would we have? A sustainable oil supply! albeit an ever-diminishing one.
An eminently sensible idea. The cornucopians claim that we have at least 50 years of oil ahead of us can't possibly disagree with it!
The Oil Drum: What would we have predicted for Kuwait?
By: Stuart Staniford 1/20/06
Excerpt:
Hubbert Linearization Analysis:
Amazingly, the intercept is at 76gb. Given that current cumulative production is 36gb, this suggest there is 40gb to go. So this is in decent general agreement with the (24gb,48gb) range from the internally leaked information that Petroleum Intelligence Weekly has gotten hold of.
That suggests Kuwait is at 47% of their ultimate recovery - so close to the half-way point. Future declines are projected to be modest based on the K of just over 4%
Could someone please post about the influence of doubling or tripling oil prices on Hubbert linearization estimates? URR, as I understand it, includes only the economically recoverable reserves. Surely, as the price rises, it must become econonomic to extract a larger percentage from each field. Wouldn't this tend to reset the linearization?
Higher prices help increase conventional production, but it's a small amount. The real problem is best shown by the East Texas Field, which is now producing 1.2 mbpd of water with a 1% oil cut. You can't do much to revive a field that has watered out.
Also, consider the Lower 48, where we have tried all manner of more sophisticated exploration, drilling, completion and production practices--and production has dropped steadily since 1970.
The North Sea, benefiting from much better technology, peaked at the same point, relative to Qt, as the Lower 48, 29 years after the Lower 48 peaked.
This does not mean that the oil industry can't make money in a post-peak region. We can and will. There is just no evidence that we can exceed the peak production. The only real rebound of consequence in a large producing region has been Russia, and its cumulative production falls within the predicted HL limits.
Where oil prices will help is with unconventional sources of oil. IMO, the only real question is the rate of increase of unconventional oil production versus the rate of decline of conventional. IMO, unconventional production will only serve to slow the rate of decline of total oil production.
The theme that needs to be hit home is that there is no more 'rest of the world'. We're operating under full-world conditions or so close to that it doesn't matter. Empty-world economic models aren't appropriate anymore. If more American's realized that India and China alone are some 2 BILLION people all searching for more and more oil I think the reality would soon set in. When the vast majority of Americans think of these places they get images in their head of villages and shantytowns that are thirty-to-forty years out of date.
There's been a lot of hype about GM & FORD failing, but I stumbled on this bllomberg article which points out the bleak outlook for Chrysler from here on.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/chi-0607280116jul28,1,2356701.story?coll=chi-business-hed
Ouch! It's kinda like a rope a dope I suppose, only that it's possible to get hit three times while paying attention to the wrong company.
Your Next Worry? The Suicide of Capitalism
http://www.larouchepub.com/other/2002/2924fannie_mae.html
Consider the source ... however the basic economic argument seems grounded in logic even if the motives of the author are questionable.
And worse the WSJ seems to be saying the same thing:
http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=105001785
Then I noticed the date; the article is 4 years old. I presume the situation is far worse today.
It seems that the people running our economy are taking the attitude of those who planned the Iraq Invasion. Best case scenarios all the time, damn the torpedos, full speed ahead.
Until they hit a torpedo, which of course could not possibly have been predicted. Utterly unexpected.
Wow..check out this paragraph buried deep and FOUR YEARS AGO!
ARMS anyone? That's how four years ago we got the maybe 2/5's of these people (record home ownership under BUSCH II) into homes that they can't afford. I'm ready as I can be.
Just yesterday I got into an argument with this lady in my office over the condos here in STL. They are springing up everywhere and I flat out said they won't sell. Our old building is being turned into condo's and are starting @ 200K topping out in the low 7 figures. I said STL won't buy condos and better yet the entire market has cooled and will be totally screwed next year when over a trillion dollars in ARMS resets. She looked at me and said, "What you think we're going into a recession or something?"
People just don't get it.
$231,000 @ 6.75% fixed 30 year loan = $1349 monthly (after 10% down payment)
Tax + insurance = $468 monthly
Total payment = $1817 monthly or $21,804 annually.
$21,804 is 28% of an annual salary of $77,871.
The housing market is cooling fast in many areas. Rising ARM + zero (or less) equity = OUCH.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/16/AR2006071600590.html
Except it didn't get the same coverage Enron did. But a $10 billion accounting "mistake" cannot be good no matter what way you look at it ...
The AFL-CIO does not want the law changed. A graph shows that currently, 7% of hedge funds capital invested is from pension funds.
I think this is it:
Law may let hedge funds manage more pension money
From the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, as usual.
With that article floating from the STL FED, has anyone else read ALL of it? I've read probably half and it's nothing new if you were paying attention. No one wants to touch this paper. Is it REALLY possible to declare bankruptcy after the party's over?
Speaking of safe Meccas, the Gulf Arabs are well entrenched in Phoenix, just in case.
Nah, they couldn't be that bright. ;)
Now, if by benefit you meant that such persons would be part of the general body of humanity improved, you may be on to something, but if you meant "take over" in some sense or another, their brightness would have little to do with it. Collapse diminishes complexity, and hierarchy is one form of complexity. Collapse leaves much less space for anyone to "take over." Egalitarian structures can prosper in a collapse, making the very notion of an "over" to take obsolete (see the emergence of the southwest Native American tribes in the wake of the collapse of the Anazazi, Hohokam, etc.). But then, I don't think the neo-feudal scenario is a very likely one at all, and many who anticipate a total collapse do. I'm working on an article that may be published on Anthropik as early as next week, detailing the full case as to why I see the neo-feudal vision as quite unrealistic.
US Treasury has said they won't bail out crashed hedge funds in future. But, when LTCM collapsed that's exactly happened as they feared a chain reaction of collapse. LTCM had taken on such ridiculous amounts of debt and risk that to let it entirely default would have been highly dangerous.
So who knows what they will do in future ....
The real key number for me in this report is what's going on with the person savings rate - that's the one that reports whether you are taking money out of your bank/house equity or selling off whatever to make ends meet:
Personal saving -- disposable personal income less personal outlays -- was a negative $141.0 billion in the second quarter, compared with a negative $97.0 billion in the first.
The personal saving rate -- saving as a percentage of disposable personal income -- decreased from a negative 1.0 percent in the first quarter to a negative 1.5 percent in the second. Saving from current income may be near zero or negative when outlays are financed by borrowing (including borrowing financed through credit cards or home equity loans), by selling investments or other assets, or by using savings from previous periods.
The problem comes when real estate and the stock market plunge, and people realize they're under water.
That's when the economy goes into an immediate dive.
$141.0 billion - so in Q2 we borrowed enough money to finance half the Iraq war. I can't say the empire isn't popular, we're willing to dig deep to keep it running.
http://english.daralhayat.com/business/07-2006/Article-20060727-b0123427-c0a8-10ed-01ce-4de8d6f17a3f /story.html
An excerpt:
But M. King Hubbard saw the significance of such a policy:
Yibal serves as a good model for Cantarell & Ghawar.
Note comments about the emerging concerns about prolonging the life of the oil fields. This is the same point made by the consultant (recommended by Saudi Aramco) at the recent PBS Peak Oil debate.
http://www.peaceredding.org/Oman's%20Oil%20Yield%20Long%20in%20Decline,%20Shell%20Data%20Show.htm
April 8, 2004
Oman's Oil Yield Long in Decline, Shell Data Show
By JEFF GERTH and STEPHEN LABATON
Excerpts:
Two engineering papers written last year by Petroleum Development Oman officials show that production in Yibal has fallen at an annual rate of about 12 percent for six years; that is more than twice the normal rate of 5 percent in the region. Moreover, Shell overstated its proven oil reserves in Oman, a December 2003 Shell report found, primarily because the company had failed to trim the figures back "in light of recent downturns in oil production rates."
But some insight into Oman's views are contained in remarks made a few years ago by its minister of oil and gas and another director of Petroleum Development Oman. The remarks were published in the venture's newsletter and posted on Shell's Web site. "We have been too preoccupied with trying to get that extra barrel" now, said the minister, Mohammed bin Hamad al-Rumhy, "rather than formulating a plan for the long term."
Countries like Oman seek to husband their oil and gas to extend their income over the long run, but Shell, aiming to increase value for its shareholders, has a shorter time horizon: its license in Oman expires in 2012, so it has emphasized pumping more oil sooner.
A Dec. 8, 2003, report to Shell's top managers about the impending restatement of reserves criticized the operation in Oman. The cause of the problems, the report said, was "the extreme focus on short-term development opportunities (`keep the rigs busy to keep the oil rate up') to the detriment of defining long-term projects."
The declines in the Yibal field are spelled out by officials of the joint venture in two papers that were published last year by the Society of Petroleum Engineers. The papers have different numbers: both say production peaked in 1997, but one said it declined to its current rate of 88,057 barrels a day by 2000 from a peak of 251,592, while the other said it fell to 95,000 barrels from 225,000. A spokeswoman for the society said she could not explain the difference.
Both papers say that about 90 percent of the liquid coming out of the ground is water and 10 percent is oil. The high volume of water, one paper said, comes in part from the water that Shell injects into the ground as part of its horizontal drilling technique, which it introduced to Oman in the early 1990's. The relatively high volume of water being pumped up adds considerably to the costs of extracting the oil.
Assuming OOIP of 172 Gb and production to date of about 60 Gb for Ghawar, Ghawar has made about 35% of OOIP, and it is fast approaching, or is past, the point at which Yibal started crashing. I believe that Yibal produces from the same reservoir as Ghawar.
From this point forward, Ghawar can have higher short term production or higher remaining recoveries, but not both.
"I have a question - given that Ghawar is using many of the same and/or similar EOR techniques as Yibal, and that Shell and the government of Oman both failed to anticipate the collapse of Yibal, why should someone believe that the same fate does not await Ghawar (and Cantarell for that matter)?"
Rocdkdoc, a frequent poster there and someone who does not believe that SA is in trouble yet over Ghawar, replied as follows:
"Apples and oranges I'm afraid. Yibal is comprised of a very fine grained homogeneous carbonate with high porosity, low matrix permeability and high permeability locally attribued to fractures. In order to attempt to get extra recovery at Yibal PDO drilled horizontal short radius wells into the reservoir well before they understood the compartimentalization. As a consequence they intersected fault zones with very high permeability connected to the water leg which effectively meant the well could not draw down pressure enough to get past the water production (oil was bypassed). A couple of recent papers on Yibal (SPE) indicate they have now run full field simulations following extensive 3D seismic acquisition. They think they know where the bypassed oil is and where the fractures are...the trick going forward will be to avoid the fracture zones or shut them off if intersected.
On the contrary Ghawar is comprised mainly of very good reservoir in the Arab D, relatively high porosity and high matrix permeability. There are zones of high permeability due to the super K (an algal mat where permeability is extreme in comparison to the surronding rock) and faults. The main difference is that the Sauids have identified the issues fairly early on (as evidenced by the SPE papers that Simmons has cherry picked from) their MRC wells are nothing like the short radius horizontals drilled by PDO...the MRC wells intersecting up to 5km of reservoir in a given well. As well the Saudis have pioneered some of the new technology regarding water shut off, horizontal well logging, expandable casing ect... they are basically generations ahead of PDO in this respect. But I would not count Yibal out based on the latest publications which suggest they are doing exactly what the Saudis did with Ghawar a number of years ago....understand the full field simulation model."
So his response is that the geology in Ghawar is completely different, that the Saudis understand this much better than Shell did in Oman, and he even says to not count out Yibal yet because he thinks they can get to the stranded oil.
I wonder if others here might choose to comment on his response.
***
It appears from Gulf country PR statements that they are committed to being as shortsighted as we are; but I would be amazed if they aren't analyzing the reality of peak oil behind the scenes.
This development merely shows they are not stupid. Once they tie production to remaining reserves, our stupidity, recklessness and shortsightedness will be shown in high relief.
P.S. This could cause all our charts and assumptions to become obsolete.
If and when producers step back production, to prolong their flow of income, then the charts will all have to be rethought and reworked. And, by definition, this would mean production would decline and the moment of peak would be moved up.
The actual case will most likely come in below the best case. Whether that means weather-related damage, terrorist/war related damage, voluntary production cutbacks to preserve their resource (as we are discussing here), accellerated decline rates due to aggressive production methods, or other unpleasant things we haven't thought of yet, there seems to be more risk to the production downside than opportunity to the upside.
If Dr. Campbell is correct and the decline is 2-3%, we might be able to adjust. If Schlumberger and others are correct and it's 8%, the global economy will probably crumble (or crumble faster).
Great nations can only change directions so fast. Response times for global civilizations would presumably need to be longer.
If they try to hold back production I'd expect we'll try to democratize them.
The big consumers (US, China?) won't like it.
In this respect, "oil grab" imperialism scenarios start to look more likely. You Kuwaitis don't want to pump out your remaining oil? Never mind, we'll do it for you.
the sooner countries husband resources the better - it amounts to a gas tax of sorts -higher prices here to stay - but some powder in reserve. best scenario i can consider (unless we go to war over it)
I know the pipelines in Iraq are constantly being damaged and then repaired, thus causing serious disruptions to the overall oil output from Iraq.
Given how pipelines (especially aboveground ones) going across hundreds of miles of open territory are so inherently vulnerable, I'm actually somewhat surprised that we are not seeing more pipeline attacks elsewhere in our troubled world.
I am also somewhat surprised that the people doing these attacks are not focusing more on the pipeline pumping stations. While a section of pipeline might be repaired in a week or so, a large pumping station could take several months to get back in operation. Perhaps because they are now very heavily guarded?
Still, several well-planned and coordinated suicide attacks on pipelines and their pumping stations could take a considerable amount of production off line for quite a while. As things heat up in the Middle East, we will probably see more of this.
pipeline repair+ oil production lost+ environmental damage/ $1.50 for the bullet + $5 for lunch = an amazing ROI for the local bandidos
I think they will do this for as long as we choose to send repair crews out.
It has nothing to do with ROI and lunch. It has to do with a clear understanding that the oil is worth nothing if it remains in the ground. It has to do with the understanding that the infrastructure to bring the oil from the ground to the Gulf is priceless.
What would you do? In their shoes you'd elect to make life tough for your adversary and yet minimise the post occupation efforts required to continue the flow of oil to the markets.
The "local bandidos" comment is pathetic and without merit. Whether you like it or not, the US has invaded. These lands have belonged to Arabs for a lot longer than the US has existed. Your choice of language may hint at a part of the problem.
I claim no real understanding of the Arab world, but I do appreciate the wisdom that your "$1.50 and lunch" throw-away represents.
-- Three Kings
Looking back at the above post, a day later, I honestly wish I had not written it. I am not a racist person and the above term is derogatory towards Arab people and most find it offensive. Tossaway remarks like that do not advance any debate and are not constructive to problem solving. To say the middle east has terrible problems is an understatement.
I grieve for the children of war and all victims of the horrible violence we see there no matter their religion or ancestry. The causes of these conflicts have roots in history as well as current decisions of leadership today.
When I wrote bandido I did not mean to offend either but obviousley I did. I certainly did not help to soothe the irritation or advance the debate with the above post.
I apologize to anybody I may have offended with the above terms.
Good point! I neglected to take into consideration the possibility that these people want to damage the pipeline system so as to deny its benefit to the occupiers but perhaps not so much as to render it useless once the occupiers are driven out.
On the other hand, if it looks like the occupiers have no intention whatsoever of leaving and plan to be there indefinitely, as appears to be the case of the US in Iraq, then lasting, long-term, and expensive damage DOES make sense, as the insurgents will not be the ones having to repair it.
Regarding Gungas' remark, I wouldn't take it too literally or take it to heart. The term 'bandito' has almost become part of the English language and is often used to convey the image of an independent outlaw. In fact, it is sometimes used almost as a compliment for someone who is outside the system and somewhat of a revolutionary. I think any insurgency could be described as a band of 'banditos' without denegrating their cause. Just my opinion and my amateur's read on contemporary American English usage.
Let us not get fixated on perceived slights. (The real ones are bad enough.)
You are right. It certainly seems like UK has problems ahead.
It seems like the situation is ripe to start getting some of these things in the local papers - maybe some of this is already being done. You might try letters to the editor, or other approaches - writing in smaller publications, making friends with someone writing for a newspaper, or whatever works. Perhaps with more publicity, more effort would be put into conservation and alternative fuels. Otherwise, UK looks a lot like a canary in a coal mine.
For some in Washington, commuting's a slug-fest
Saudi Arabia's Shiites and their Effect on the Kingdom's Stability
Excerpts:
Although there is little evidence of Shiite militancy inside the Saudi kingdom at present, the violence between Shiites and Sunnis in neighboring Iraq remains intense and could spill over into Saudi Arabia. Indeed, the specter of confessional violence looms as homegrown Saudi Salafi-Jihadists and the fighters returning from the jihad in Iraq could clash with the quiescent Shiites living inside the oil-rich kingdom.
Although there is still little evidence of returning Saudi fighters, there is cause for concern with respect to the oil industry. The oil target is a way to attack the Saudi regime, the West and, in the Eastern Province, also the Shiites since they comprise a considerable number of Saudi Aramco's manual labor force. If Saudi Salafi-Jihadists do in fact return home and inject new blood, energy and more sophisticated techniques into homegrown Saudi terrorist movements, it is very likely that there will be increased attacks on oil infrastructure, including the enormous and exposed water-pumping installations which Saudi Aramco depends on to pump crude oil from its aging supergiant fields in the Eastern Province.
Therefore, it will be important to monitor whether returning Saudi fighters breathe new life into the kingdom's Sunni insurgency. If the violent Salafi-Jihadists returning from Iraq decide to fight the Shiites in the Eastern Province, the effect on oil prices would be dramatic and devastating for the Western economies, thus giving the Saudi jihadis one more enticing incentive to bring confessional violence to Saudi Arabia.
This has backfired, since Israel miscalculated, and Hezbollah has stalemated the Israelis. This amounts to a Hezbollah victory, which Israel cannot allow. Israel is under tremendous strategic pressure to "win", which may not be possible without an actual prolonged war.
THerefore, the Sunni rulers are backtracking and calling for a ceasefire. If the Lebanese war (Shi'ite vs. Jew) merges with the four way war in Iraq (Arabs against "Christian Zionist Crusaders", Shia vs. Sunni, Kurd vs. Arab & Turkomen, Shias and Sunnis vs themselves), then it is quite likely that the war will expand to include the neighbors.
and indeed while the world's attention focused on Lebanon, Iraq is sinking into full blown civil war, with Iraqi government officials admitting that "the Iraqi experiment is over" and the breakup of the country is inevitable.
The Sunni rulers have every reason to be afraid. This growing civil war could very easily blossom and drag in the entire Middle East into a war between Sunni and Shia. And as WesTexas noted, there are large Shia minorities in the oil producing areas of the western Gulf, with Bahrain, I believe, Shia majority.
money quotes;
That's why US troops are being pulled from the Sunni triangle and thrown into Baghdad, to try to stem this imminent breakup of Iraq. This shift will also relieve pressure on the Sunni insurgents, and allow them to consolidate their position in the provinces, and shift forces to Baghdad as well.
I guess we'll have to wait and see whose "reality" prevails.
The US has about as much chance of 'sweeping the Middle East' as Germany, after the battle of Stalingrad, had of sweeping the Soviet Union. Or about as much chance as LBJ did of sweeping Vietnam in 1968.
Bush, ensconced in the bowels of the White House, behind layer upon layer of security and layer upon layer of yes-men, is no less removed from reality than Hilter was, circa early 1945, when he was ensconced in his Fürher-bunker behind layer upong layer of security and layer upon layer of yes-men.
Hitler at the time was ordering divisions into battle that no longer existed. Bush appears to be not far from doing the same.
No one stopped Hitler's insane actions, and no one will stop Bush's.
I fear we are all in for a very bad time.
Yeah, I agree, GWB's behavior appears to be getting somewhat grotesque. The question is: Why?
I hope you are not the only one picking up on this.
In fact the only sober one I can think of was Hitler. You better seriously reconsider your methodology. Sounds like you've got a problem. Maybe it has something to do with your "mindset." Just checking.
Oh, yeah, sorry... Nasrallah and Ahmadinejad seem real sober, too. No problem there. Did you look at this issue for even half a second past the point where you decided you didn't like George Bush and you were going to rip him?
This is stupid crap. You are more capable than this.
As for my mindset that's between me and my psychiatrist.
Jesus? Did I just misjudge someone? ...Lloyd, did I just misjudge someone?
"Yessir, that happens occassionally."
"Words of wisdom, Lloyd - Words of Wisdom."
The idea that Churchill was an alcoholic is flat-out nonsense propounded largely by his political opponents in Britain and especially by that Goebbels guy in Nazi Germany. You do not live to age ninety and die with no evidence of cirrosis of the liver if you are an alcoholic.
I'm reminded of what Lincoln said when busybodies informed him that General Grant was drinking a fair amount:
"Then I shall find his brand of whiskey and send a barrel of it to my other generals." [or words to that effect]
To grasp the true extent of alcohol consumption among upper class Brits, I suggest reading the well-researched novels of Patrick O'Brian. Ah, Captain John Aubrey, a man after my own heart.
* Ale (6)
* Ale, buttered (2)
* Beer (6)
* Cider (7)
* Metheglin (6)
* Mum (2)
* Posset (6)
* Sherry (1)
* Spirits (5)
* Wine (23)
* Wormwood (20)
http://www.pepysdiary.com/
I can't remember why I stopped following Pepys' Diary, but it was very worthwhile reading.
It used to be said prior to 1991.. that they earned more from their financial investments than they did from their oil. Then they had to pay for the Gulf War/liberation...
With the current price of oil and consequent vast amounts of hard cash at their disposal.. I imagine that they are back to same investment position.
I noted a news item in TOD yesterday about the emir giving "everybody" (well, in reality, probably just all 1st class Kuwaiti males) a present of $700... tho' that's mere pocket change to a Kuwaiti..
http://tinyurl.com/hrt3y
snip snip
By Michel Chossudovsky
07/26/06 "GlobalResearch" --- - Is there a relationship between the bombing of Lebanon and the inauguration of the World's largest strategic pipeline, which will channel more a million barrels of oil a day to Western markets?
Virtually unnoticed, the inauguration of the Ceyhan-Tblisi-Baku (BTC) oil pipeline, which links the Caspian sea to the Eastern Mediterranean, took place on the 13th of July, at the very outset of the Israeli sponsored bombings of Lebanon.
One day before the Israeli air strikes, the main partners and shareholders of the BTC pipeline project, including several heads of State and oil company executives were in attendance at the port of Ceyhan. They were then rushed off for an inauguration reception in Istanbul, hosted by Turkey's President Ahmet Necdet Sezer in the plush surroundings of the Çýraðan Palace.
Also in attendance was British Petroleum's (BP) CEO, Lord Browne together with senior government officials from Britain, the US and Israel. BP leads the BTC pipeline consortium. Other major Western shareholders include Chevron, Conoco-Phillips, France's Total and Italy's ENI. (see Annex)
Israel's Minister of Energy and Infrastructure Binyamin Ben-Eliezer was present at the venue together with a delegation of top Israeli oil officials.
The BTC pipeline totally bypasses the territory of the Russian Federation. It transits through the former Soviet republics of Azerbaijan and Georgia, both of which have become US "protectorates", firmly integrated into a military alliance with the US and NATO. Moreover, both Azerbaijan and Georgia have longstanding military cooperation agreements with Israel. In 2005, Georgian companies received some $24 million in military contracts funded out of U.S. military assistance to Israel under the so-called "Foreign Military Financing (FMF) program".