Oil refineries... (1 Viewer)

[mark alan]

Our current civilization cannot survive without liquid fuels. Even if we had an alternate source available today, it would take 20-30 years to make a switch over. We don't have an alternate source, and there is no reasonable alternative in sight.

We need biomass-based fuels, a much more extensive mass transportation system, a massive increase in fuel economy for petroleum-based vehicles, and a shift in overall world consumption methods. This is a massive undertaking, and if we wait until oil hits $200/barrel, it will be too late to make these changes without massive disruptions and great hardship.

For an example, look at Brazil. They emarked on a plan to become energy self-sufficent in the 1970s. They have essentially succeeded, thanks to ethanol production. However, it took 30 years.

Sugar cane based ethanol production (like Brazil has done) will not work for the US. Corn-based production is also a bad idea, since it takes to energy equivalent of .8 barrels of oil to make a barrel of ethanol by that method. We need cellulosic ethanol, and we need it on a massive scale. If we had spent 1% of our defense budget on this over the last 30 years, we would be in much, much better shape, and we wouldn't be held hostage by the middle east. In my opinion, a much better use of our tax dollars to provide security.

 

[BrianB]

And yet, we're still incapable, or more precisely, unwilling to feed everyone on earth.

 

[Jeff Ulmer]

The reason being is that you are only taking into account the developed world, and are ignoring the tens of millions of people who die every year due to starvation and poverty - not only in the third world, but here at home.

There is no way that the world could sustain its current population if everyone consumed at the levels of the G8. Our living standards are a direct result of living off the backs and suffering of others. Westerners would find it very difficult to support this type of lifestyle without cheap foreign labor, as the costs for goods would astronomical.

Sure, the wealthy are living longer and in greater comfort, but their are billions who are not so fortunate.

Unfortunately, discussion of the policies that perpetuate this situation are beyond the scope of this forum.

 

[mark alan]

I forgot to point out that the massive increase in farm productivity was fueled by petroleum-based equipment and petroleum-based fertilizers, along with low-cost food distribution. We lose those, and half the people in the US will starve to death in short order.

 

[Glenn Overholt]

That argument doesn't fly with me. It isn't like we are all going to wake up tomorrow and hear that all of the oil wells are dry now. So there is time, ha, ha, ha!

If and when they do, though, and we start pumping our own, do you think that we'll export it too?

You're right, let's not go there.

Glenn

 

[Philip Hamm]

Do you really believe that progress has done nothing but go forward forever? There have been great complex fantastic societites in the past. Egypt, Rome, Maya, so many others; they all have fallen, every one. History is filled with society after society rising and falling. And with them much wisdom was lost. The recipie for concrete was lost for a thousand years.

We are not immune to history, our society will fall, as well. Perhaps the end of cheap energy will be the catalyst. Perhaps someone will come up with some as yet unknown way to extend our ways.

Please find me some really good reliable scientific sources which dispute peak oil. No economic theories, please, and no "abiotic" nonsense or "shale oil" fantasies or "oil from coal" environmental catastrophes. I want to see hard scientific evidence that the peak of easy-to-extract, easy-to-refine oil is not immenent. The most vocal critic of Peak Oil is Michael Lynch, an economist from MIT. He does make some good compelling points which may add up to a few years, but his arguments are largely pie-in-the-sky "techology and the markets will save us". He predicted a crude price of $25 for this summer a year ago.

The longest surviving cultures in the world have been the most sustainable. Whether that be the aborigony culture in Austrailia or the Egyptians with their boutiful yearly Nile flood. I look around and I don't see sustainability.

 

[Philip Hamm]

Sounds like you stumbled on Heinberg. He's a kook. Unfortunately the Peak Oil phenomenon tends to attract wacked out end of the world kooks. back to nature anti-technology wack-jobs, and conspiracy nutcakes, since the darkest of predictions fit in with their worldview. It does the Peak Oil awareness cause no good for these people to get so much attention.

I recommend instead, Kenneth Defeyes, Matthew Simmons, and my poersonal favorite James Howard Kunstler.

Buzz, your statement displays your non-undertanding of the problem. No-one ever creates energy. Energy can not be created according to the laws of thermodynamics. In the last hundred and fifty years or so the human race has discovered exactly one new source of energy, nuclear fission and fusion, and the chances are there are none left to discover.

 

[Jeff Ulmer]

Point taken Phillip, but I'm sure what Buzz was suggesting was that we need to develop alternative energy sources, and apply them large scale. that means doing away with the internal combustion engine, and any other technology that relies on oil derivatives. Unfortunately, as long as there is a large power base with a vested interest in oil, including at the government level, there will be no shift in energy policy. Alternate energy technology is bought out by the oil companies who don't want us to lose reliance on their products, and their lobbying efforts make sure that we maintain the status quo. I find it somewhat amusing that the US is pushing for more nuclear reactors given all the previous rhetoric about terrorist vulnerability, and also the very real Chernobl and Three Mile Island accidents.

 

[AjayM]

You guys realize that the oil companies spend hundreds of millions if not billions of dollars a year researching ways to decrease the reliance on oil and other alternative energy sources? Some of the smartest business minded people in the world work for those oil companies, and like yourselves they realize that there is only so much oil on the planet, and once it dries up so does their business. If they make the next big breakthrough then they get to corner that market as well.

 

[mark alan]

Actually, oil companies have quit (literally) trying to find new sources of petroleum. Most people in the industry are quite confident that there are no more megafields left to find. They are not investing in new refineries (because with shrinking stocks of crude oil they are a bad investment. With the exception of BP, they are not investing significantly in research on alternative energy sources.

They are spending money to buy back stock, to buy each other out (the only way to increase oil reserves) and buying other companies.

Oil companies talk publically about oil sands and oil shale as providing the increased oil requirements (120 million barrels/day by 2030, vs ~82 mbd now). However, Exxon recently issued a report which stated that non-opec oil production will peak in the next five years (I believe that it already has). oil sands are expected to be able to provide only 3.3% of the demand by 2030, and oil shale is expected to provide 0.0% of the demand.

The exxon report stated that opec will have to significantly and continously increase capacity (multiple millions of barrels/day increase every year) to keep up with world demand. If you research oil reserves and production methods in the opec countries, you will quickly realize that opec countries will be lucky to maintain current production levels for the next 20 years, much less increase them.

Excluding minor fluctuations, we are going to see continously increasing oil prices until oil demand starts dropping.

 

[Philip Hamm]

The largest and most productive Solar energy companies in the world are..... BP and Shell. They together own the lion's share of the PV panel business.

 

[AjayM]

Where did you get your information from Mark?

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/...in530174.shtml - Talks about Exxon/Mobil giving $100 Million to a research study at Stanford.

Exxon/Mobil is also a member of a few fuel cell technology groups (along with BP, Shell, Chevron).

Chevron is one of the leading companies doing stuff with hydrogen today. They've also invested quite a lot of money into "effeciency" and being able to turn less than desirable crude oil into something worth while, etc.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/1390521.stm - talk about Shell and their investments into alt energy.

And not searching for more oil? Yikes, I'd like to see what kind of info you got that one from?

 

[mark alan]

removed

 

[Philip Hamm]

Fuel cells and hydrogen are not energy sources, they're energy carriers.

 

[AjayM]

Actually hydrogen is an energy "source", and while fuel cells themselves is a carrier but in the context it refers to building vehicles that run on alternative fuels, which will lower the reliance on crude oil.

Andrew

 

[Philip Hamm]

Hydrogen in no way can be considered an energy source. It takes more energy to manufacture the hydrogen than you get out of it. You can't drill for hydrogen or harvest it some other way, you have to manufacture it, which takes energy.

 

[AjayM]

You realize that you need to consume energy to refine oil, right? The effect is that you produce more energy than you consume. The same as far as I have read occurs with hydrogen, if that is not the case then I'd like to read about it, because it would be really stupid for places like Iceland that plan to be completely hydrogen dependent in the next 40-50 years.

Beyond that, investing money into researching other means of energy would include making the processes of creating/refining them more effecient, I'm pretty sure the first time somebody tried to make gasoline from crude it wasn't the most "energy effecient".

 

[Nathan Eddy]

Phillip, you mentioned that I should read up on Simmons (among others). I did. Here's a tidbit I found:

"Lawrence Goldstein, president of PIRA Energy Group in New York, said he was present when Simmons met with Saudi officials to gather information for his book and that he remains an "agnostic" when it comes to the peak oil production debate.

It isn't entirely clear, Goldstein said, whether today's tight global supply reflects a geologic limit that is being reached or if it merely signifies that the industry hasn't made the necessary investments to keep up with rising demand.

"The truth is, I don't know whether we're resource-constrained or effort-constrained and neither does anybody else," he said." [ http://www.cbc.ca/cp/business/050621/b062176.html

Sure, I haven't debunked his opinion with one post, but I thought it was interesting coming from someone who was actully there when Simmons gathered his data.

 

[Nathan Eddy]

I read about using windmills to generate the electricity to extract hydrogen from water. Wind is a renewable, essentially endless energy supply (as long as the sun keeps heating our atmosphere). And after the initial cost of building the windmills and transmitting the electricity, the only other cost is storing the hydrogen. The electricity is transmitted to the hydrogen "gas station" where the extraction is done on site, using the local water supply. I haven't done a cost/benefit analysis, but how is this any different from 1) building oil rigs, 2) extracting the oil, 3) transporting the oil across the GLOBE, 4) building refineries, 5) refining the oil, 6) transporting the gasoline to distribution centers?

I'd like to see some numbers before I can be convinced that all those steps are cheaper than using wind and water for fuel. Factor in environmental and health costs assoiciated with burning fossil fuels, too.

http://www.rednova.com/news/science/...energy_needed/

 

[mark alan]

Iceland has geothermal energy which supplies all its electricity needs and can use the electricity to make hydrogen.

Unless we built many, many nuclear power plants, we have no way to generate the hydrogen. The most likely source of hydrogen for the US would be from natural gas or methanol. In both cases, converting these to hydrogen to power vehicles makes no sense from an efficiency standpoint.