Oily musings

October 18, 2004 12:13 PM

Peak Oil? Include Me Out,is one of the best reads about the whole issue of peak oil. Its author, Mick Winter "is a former Y2K community activist who currently suffers from chronic déjà vu and still hasn't figured out what to do about Peak Oil." I am a peaknik and I can tell you this is a good read, no matter your stance on peak oil! (psssst, if you are already a peaknik, or just curious, Winter maintains a good a peak oil metadirectory. )
posted by samelborp (41 comments total)

Oil companies are raking in record profits, but are not translating that into record investment in new facilities. In fact, they haven't built a new refinery in the United States since 1976... Perhaps they also recognize that there is no sense in spending a lot of money expanding facilities when the stuff those facilities process is just about to start contracting.

Well, no. They haven't built refineries in the US because regulations make domestic refining extremely expensive. To evaluate his claim that big oil thinks supplies will contract, it would be useful to have worldwide refinery data. Sloppy thinking by Mr. Winter.
posted by Kwantsar at 12:29 PM on October 18, 2004

The premise is so logically flawed (Y2K = Peak Oil) , Im not sure I want to read it. Drydipstick is good.
posted by stbalbach at 12:38 PM on October 18, 2004

i don't get the Y2K-Peak Oil connection at *all* - one was a computer error that could be fixed with a lot of extra work; the other is the (allegedly) diminishing return of a natural resource. both could cripple the global economy and threaten social welfare, but doomsday "what-ifs" are about all that connect the two concepts.

his premise is not unlike Michael C. Ruppert of From the Wilderness. US politicians are oil people -> some of them must believe in the concept of peak oil -> no wonder we're so concerned about having influence in iraq and saudi arabia.

i have very little doubt that the current US military actions are in large part based on maintaining control of the dwindling oil supply. that and winning elections.
posted by mrgrimm at 12:43 PM on October 18, 2004

Mmm, the best thing of the article is the feeling of "oh no, there it comes again" that Winter sweats, knowing that any mention to Y2K is going to be used to debunk peak oil doomsaying. BTW, the peaknik link is not a self-link.
posted by samelborp at 12:51 PM on October 18, 2004

I saw and discussed the film the End of Suburbia recently at a gathering. It was interesting and it introduces this whole peak oil concept, but it seems to do so in a way that predisposes a doomsday scenario. Doesn't peak oil just mean that oil production will now taper off and that we have to get more efficient/taper off our use of it as it does so?
posted by Pollomacho at 1:09 PM on October 18, 2004

"US politicians are oil people -> some of them must believe in the concept of peak oil" -mrgrimm - funny you should mention Cheney "Vice- President Dick Cheney made a speech at the London Institute of Petroleum Autumn lunch in 1999 when he was Chairman of Halliburton. A key passage from his speech was: “That means by 2010 we will need on the order of an additional fifty million barrels a day.”  It suggested that he at that time was fully aware of the issue of peak oil."


"Statement by Matthew Simmons, energy adviser for President Bush, at the 1:st International Workshop on Oil Depletion, Uppsala, Sweden, May, 23-25, 2002:
“We need a wake up call. We need it desperately. We need basically a new form of energy. I don’t know that there is one.”  (TV4, Sweden)"

ASPO - Association for The Study of Peak Oil
posted by troutfishing at 1:16 PM on October 18, 2004

Peak oil is frankly not a concern. If conventional oil were some sort of fundamental resource that was impossible to replace, we would be in for some trouble. However, there are tons of ways to replace conventional oil. With oil at the price that it is now, lots of these alternatives are being ramped up. First, you're going to see more ultra-deep drilling, and more expensive enhanced recovery techniques. Then we will see more unconventional oil. Tar sands and shale can provide a fair bit of capacity. The big medium-term winner will be Fischer-Tropsch and related coal-to-oil technologies. These technologies are capable of providing conventional oil equivalent products for about $45/bbl, which I might add is $10 less than the current spot price of oil. Beyond this, there are huge natural gas reserves all over the world, and all we have to do is build enough pipelines and LNG tankers to get it to where it needs to be. Cars can run directly on LNG, or it can be converted to oil. Once we run out of the non-renewables, nuclear fission to hydrogen, or some other energy carrier will take us literally thousands of years into the future.

This post is ultimately right on. There are two psychological issues at play here. The first is the desire to know about a major problem that others don't. This makes people feel plugged in, and like they're in on an important secret. The second, in the more extreme peak oil people is the robinson crusoe factor. The exact same thing happened with the Y2K people. It's fun to think about what you would do if civilization collapsed. Modern society has made making a living a very abstract enterprise. The idea of being self-sufficient, and in a smaller community where there is direct mutual accountability for survival is a very understandable desire.
posted by cameldrv at 1:22 PM on October 18, 2004

Doesn't peak oil just mean that oil production will now taper off and that we have to get more efficient/taper off our use of it as it does so?

It seems to also include the consideration that as production tapers off, demand is increasing. It's a double-whammy.

By the way, why the hell didn't I hear any policymakers seriously discussing the problems inherit in resource competition with emerging industrialized countries prior to this year? It's like all of a sudden China's devouring resources, prices are increasing, and no one had even imagined this scenario. Do we have any approach to deal with the inflationary pressure from this resource competition? Things could get ugly quick for the US economy: increased prices for raw materials are great fuel for stagflation. Hello, 1977! Welcome back!
posted by mr_roboto at 1:22 PM on October 18, 2004

That's the longest, most boring poem I've ever seen. And it didn't rhyme, either.
posted by coelecanth at 2:20 PM on October 18, 2004

mr_roboto is right on. The issue isn't really the decline in oil production, it's the financial havoc that high demand and low supply will create. Things have worked out well so far because oil has been CHEAP. When it is expensive, it literally will not be worth drilling for, as the energy input required to get it up, out, refined, and to market will exceed the energy content of the oil.

Google "EROEI" to understand. It's the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which cannot be overcome by laws, marketing, or wishful thinking. Probably not prayer either, but the jury's probably still out on that one.

So what will happen is that while there will still be oil and gas and tar sands etc., but the oil will be very expensive, and will have to be almost totally expended to power only absolutely vital projects -- hopefully the development of all the "alternative" sources which you list, cameldrv.

To put it in perspective, remember that until alternative sources are online and providing baseline necessary power for existing demand, oil will still need to be burned to develop and construct those sources.

In short, post-Peak, it will be foolish in the extreme for us to continue burning 50% of the oil we use in America in our cars and SUVs. That oil will be needed to power the manufacturing effort involved in the new energy infrastructure, whatever it might be.

However, it's just as likely to be squandered in wars to control oil elsewhere, and to squelch the dissent of the population when the government takes all the oil to power the military, leaving us with bicycles.

Nobody in America wants to hear that our cars will be taken away, but in order to avoid the worst effects of the coming energy crunch, it will be absolutely necessary. And that is the point of End Of Suburbia; people will need to consolidate into smaller, self-sufficient communties simply because we will no longer be able to drive to work, whether the commute be 5 miles or 50.

Not to mention that diesel fuel will be far too expensive for hauling food to far-flung locations.

And that's assuming everything goes smoothly with the transition. If the very financial base of the US (or world) economy is destroyed, that won't be the case at all. And as the article says, oil is traded in dollars. If oil declines, the dollars falls with it.

In addition, Pollomacho, responding to your question:

Doesn't peak oil just mean that oil production will now taper off and that we have to get more efficient/taper off our use of it as it does so?

That is the simple, "energy only" part of the equation, but it leaves out economics. Cheap oil so completely permeates every bit of our economy that non-cheap oil can completely upset every facet of the Western way of life. As only one example, food could become extremely expensive (if not produced very locally to you) because agriculture is now practiced by huge corporations and thoroughly powered by oil and gas. Fertilizer is made from natural gas, the harvesters and processing systems are powered by oil (and manufactured using oil-powered industry), the pesticides are oil-based, the transportation is powered by oil, the storage facilities are built using construction equipment powered by oil...

Are you getting the picture? Look around you, where you're sitting right now, and try to figure out how much of what surrounds you is created using oil and/or oil-powered machinery. On the list: anything made of plastic, glass, metal, paper, cardboard, fabric, paint, or wood. (Yes, wood. Nobody uses handsaws in the forest anymore, and they don't power sawmills with oxen or river water, either.)

That should help folks understand the impact.
posted by zoogleplex at 2:29 PM on October 18, 2004

In short, post-Peak, it will be foolish in the extreme for us to continue burning 50% of the oil we use in America in our cars and SUVs. That oil will be needed to power the manufacturing effort involved in the new energy infrastructure, whatever it might be.

couldn't agree more. the thing is, how to explain this and avoid the perception that curing our oil addiction is a bad thing, something left for the next generation. It is now that we must act, if we want to make a difference.
posted by samelborp at 2:55 PM on October 18, 2004

The other thing to remember is that oil- and gas- based power is the most portable and efficient. To understand this, let's look at coal, which is going to be a major component of post-Peak energy, since the estimate is that there's between 100 and 250 years of it there in the ground, if we use it at present levels and don't increase our demand.

The problem is, how do you mine the coal? Today, it's with oil-powered machinery and explosives that are based on petrochemistry. It's very difficult to power a mining shovel with coal, so they run on diesel. I suppose it would be possible to build a coal-fired electrical generator right at the coal mine, and power the shovels with electricity generated on-site. But it's not as efficient; the EROEI on the coal is made smaller - which is bad because if you're using oil to dig out the coal it's not that great anyway. The cost of building the generator has to be figured in, and it will be built with oil-powered machinery, using oil-powered chemistry, out of parts made in factories that are ultimately powered by oil.

And then you have to transport the coal. This is done with trucks and trains, both of which are diesel-powered (diesel-electric in the case of trains). It's not economically feasible to power either of these transport media with electricity - you'd have to string power lines for the trains, for instance - and you certainly can't power them with coal!

So the sheer transportability of gasoline and diesel is a big factor in their usefulness. Nobody's invented any sort of storage battery for electricity that will carry around enough power to run a tractor-trailer for 500 miles.

You want to be the richest person on earth? Invent an electrical storage system that makes it possible to cart around power like you cart around a gas can. That would be a miracle.
posted by zoogleplex at 4:41 PM on October 18, 2004

A concern about the long-term geopolitics Peak Oil is the only rationale for invading Iraq that has ever made sense to me.

As for the Y2K connection: I see the similarities only because I own a copy of the "Y2K Preparedness Handbook" put out by the Utne reader. It included chapters on things like providing community counseling centers for the orphans of people killed during Y2K-induced food riots and creating alternative economic structures to to cushion us from the collapse of the international monetary system. In that sense, it's similar to the sorts of things you read on dieoff.org.
posted by alms at 4:57 PM on October 18, 2004

You're right alms, it IS the only reason that makes sense. Too bad there's been a 2 million barrel-per-day shortfall in Iraq's production since we invaded. That's a goodly chunk of oil, about 2.4% of world demand, or 7.6% of US demand.

That's why I paid $2.50 a gallon the other day to fill up my Accord. $27!!
posted by zoogleplex at 5:08 PM on October 18, 2004

Once again, there is a common misconception about peak oil. First and foremost, peak oil is not a single curve, but two curves: production and consumption.

Peak oil is only a problem when the consumption curve wants to rise above 100% of production. But that's not really fair. Because production can and does rise beyond 100%. To explain:

There are many kinds "regular" oil production that are currently used and count towards the 100%; but there are other means to produce oil that are not normally included in the curve, but can be, such as expensive-to-produce oil from oil shale. As prices rise with consumption approaching 100% of production, other types of production come on line.

There is also downward pressure on the consumption curve, from things like conservation and alternative energy sources that become practical when the price of oil goes up.

So what happens in a state of peak oil? First of all, the price of oil up to 100% of normal production remains about the same. Speculation and expense happen in the marginal area above 100% production, which means that *new* consumption, not existing consumption, gets the biggest burden if it uses oil.

In the oil industry, this is seen as the difference between long-term oil contracts at an average price, and the oil "spot market", which is much more expensive pay as you need oil. Marginal production and marginal or new consumption are pretty well stuck in the spot market.

So when and where do peak oil happen. Right now, for one. China is suffering terribly from a peak oil problem, which is quickly draining it of hard foreign currency. It has such growth in its economy that it is heavily reliant on the spot market to make up for its needs.

Having no other choice it is vying for a massive nuclear power program based in modular pebble bed reactors. On the order of 200-300 nuclear power plants as fast as possible.

And yet, while China is being terribly squeezed, the US is not particularly uncomfortable, because its oil comes from the contract market. This market assures both adequate supplies and at a stable low price. The small amount of oil the US needs to buy from the spot market is more than balanced by these enormous long-term contracts.

So right now, Americans can still drive their SUVs at around $2/gal, while the Chinese are having blackouts and industrial slowdowns. And much of the credit for this, on the US side, goes to a deep understanding of production and consumption economics, and prior planning.
posted by kablam at 5:23 PM on October 18, 2004

zoogleplex: We have invented a battery that lets you run a tractor-trailer for 500 miles. It's called a hydrogen tank. Yes, Coal requires oil to extract. However, if you're producing more oil from the coal than you get out of the ground, it's not a problem. This is clearly evident from the fact that coal costs about 1/3 as much per BTU as oil. If the amount of oil energy required were a significant factor in coal mining and transportation, this would not be the case. The simple fact is that coal to oil via Fischer-Tropsch is going to be big business . The U.S. economy does not depend on cheap oil in order to power itself. Even if we were puchasing all of our crude oil at the current spot market price, it would only account for about 3.5% of our GDP. The price of oil has doubled in the past few years, to no great detriment to our economy. The price could quadruple from here and our economy would still be humming along at a slightly reduced level of output. With coal to oil technology though, the long-term price of oil isn't going to get above $50/bbl for at least the next 15-20 years. That's plenty of time to tap the huge natural gas reserves of the rockies and put more nuke plants online in order to save coal for conversion to gasoline and diesel.

If you still believe that peak oil is a near-term problem, I would suggest that you question the reasons that you believe in it, and whether you would like it to be true. If peak oil fits in with your asthetic of environmentalism, sustainability, etc, you may want to question whether those things aren't the reason you believe in it, rather than the hard science and economics of energy.
posted by cameldrv at 5:47 PM on October 18, 2004

while China is being terribly squeezed, the US is not particularly uncomfortable

Yet.

Contract production can't continue indefinitely. Even Cheney and Greenspan have admitted the peak is nigh, Cheney saying 2010 - and adding that in 2010, some 50 million additional barrels per day of production will be needed. At some point even our own contract "normal" production oil is going to slow down, putting us into the "spot" oil market.

China building lots of pebble-bed reactors is a good plan on their part - but they're still going to have to mine uranium to fuel them, not to mention the fabrication and infrastructure costs.

Canadian tar sands have a huge reservoir of oil in them, but it's very energy intensive to get it out. I did read a Wired article that there's been some improvement in efficiency there, so that's a hopeful development, but to ramp up production there to levels that will sustain current standards of living in the US and Canada will take too long.

Also, the "downward pressure" on the consumption curve which you cite has so far failed to materialize, with world demand climbing as much as 3% per year every year, according to pretty much everything I've read - including oil company reports.

Currently, demand is about equal to production at roughly 82 million barrels per day, with perhaps 1% or 2% more production possible. Demand is projected to grow another 3% next year - so, consumption will exceed production by around 1% in 2005.

There will be a reduction in living standard, within the next decade, period, unless some wild card is thrown in. And we will not be able to drive SUVs around for $2 a gallon. In many places in America, like here in Los Angeles, we can't do it even now; the lowest price I saw this week was $2.35 for regular.

The Second Law of Thermodynamics is inviolable. At some point in the near future there simply won't be enough net energy, and we will all encounter real energy shortage. Tar sands and oil shales are not going to push the Production Curve back up. "Casual" use of petroleum and natural gas will not be possible after a certain date; it will all need to be directed to food production, alternative source development, and probably military defense of oil and gas sources.

And that's leaving out possible economic market problems triggered by the ripple effect of higher oil prices on everything else in our economy.

On preview: cameldrv, actually I'm no tree-hugger. I'd rather everything continued as you say - my income potential and personal comfort will be a lot better that way!! However, I'm not so sure I'm the one who needs the physics lesson here. Hard science is what fuels my belief. You do NOT get more energy out of something than you put into it - ever. There are illusions of that, however, on which I'll elaborate.

That tankful of hydrogen you speak of requires more energy to create than it provides to the truck, resulting in a net energy loss, according to the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Therefore it's a losing proposition to try to use it. Gasoline and diesel fuel have cost FAR less energy in the past to produce and refine than the energy we got out of them in use - an EROEI (Energy Return on Energy Input) of as high as 1 unit of oil energy to extract produce 30 useful units - practically free energy.

Let me try to rephrase that last for clarity. In the past, for every 30 barrels of oil that came shooting up out of the ground, all the infrastructure required to capture, refine and transport that oil only cost 1 barrel of oil. Which would seem to violate the Second Law, until you realize that those 30 barrels of oil took some hundreds of millions of years to create: compressed solar energy is what it is, millions of years of it. But in the short term here, it has resulted in the "appearance" of defying entropy! Truly amazing!

If the amount of oil energy required were a significant factor in coal mining and transportation, this would not be the case.

This is explained by my above paragraph. Oil has "reversed" entropy, so it's cheap energy. It's not a significant factor now; it will be as time goes on.

Even now the ration of "energy in" to "energy out" has dropped to about 5 barrels out per 1 barrel in - still running against entropy! At some point that ratio will come to 1 to 1, whereupon it's not worth going after the oil at all anymore.

You need to consider the ACTUAL economy of energy use to generate energy. And that's the problem with hydrogen; it's only a "carrier," it takes more energy to create it here on earth than you get out of it. And currently the most economical way of making it is from natural gas; which means you LOSE much money fueling a truck with hydrogen - you're better off filling it with NG!!

This is similar to the problems so far with fusion: it takes more energy to fire the reaction than you get out of it. The sun works because of incredible pressure caused by sheer gravitational mass creates the high temperatures needed to start the fusion; it exists as an equilibrium between the contractive force of gravity and the explosive force of its fusion-powered core. Doing the same thing here on earth, so far, has been impossible. And even the sun will run out of fuel eventually.

Of course, in the near term, rising prices will make oil an attractive investment property, and will make alternative sources more cost-competitive.

I'm interested in this Fischer-Tropsch thing you're citing, I will google it. However, could you provide a link to it for the thread?
posted by zoogleplex at 6:28 PM on October 18, 2004

Invent an electrical storage system that makes it possible to cart around power like you cart around a gas can.

Well you do have the BlackLightPower claims for thier battery. Energy Density (Volumetric) Up to 182 Wh/cc Energy Density (Gravimetric) Up to 222 Wh/g Or how about Magentic motor?

zoogleplex: We have invented a battery that lets you run a tractor-trailer for 500 miles. It's called a hydrogen tank.

While your optimism is charming, the 'better' battery is already oil. Hydrogen is a loosing proposition. Don Lancaster explains it quite well.

Humans can 'make' oil via plants right now. 40 gals an acre for soybeans (if you chemically extract the oil, the plants need 200 tons a day to operate economically) to 650 gal an acre for Palm oil up to a possilbe 20,000 gallons if you grow algae to make the oil.

Oh, and Algae can grow on human sewage, so its a fuel source AND a waste processing method. Yea, it will smell, but what price for SUV driving?


A concern about the long-term geopolitics Peak Oil is the only rationale for invading Iraq that has ever made sense to me.
How about Keeping Petro priced in Dollars, bases in the area so military power can be 'projected', and control of the potable water?

If you still believe that peak oil is a near-term problem
Its all about the lack of low-priced oil. Too bad China and Russia turned thier back on the Communist ethos of 'we are self reliant' and started looking outward for energy, driving up demand.

(What I don't understand is why the President is not doing what he promised in 2000. "And the president of the United States must jawbone OPEC members to lower the price." )
posted by rough ashlar at 6:33 PM on October 18, 2004

Heh, oh wait. Fischer-Tropf is the process developed in Germany to create fuel for the military in WWII after their "regular" oil ran out. You do not get more out of it than you get in; that was a desperation measure to change rocks into liquid fuel so they could keep fighting. As a wartime measure, it sort of works, but it's not sustainable and definitely not scalable.

We're better of burning the coal directly for energy, that way we don't lose as much energy.

Please study your physics more carefully.
posted by zoogleplex at 6:35 PM on October 18, 2004

Nobody in America wants to hear that our cars will be taken away ...

i do, i do!
posted by mrgrimm at 6:59 PM on October 18, 2004

zoogleplex: Fischer-Tropsch is not a process for producing energy. It is a process for converting natural gas or coal into diesel or gasoline. You state that it is not sustainable or scalable. As to its scalability, the only questions are whether you can build enough plants, and whether there is enough coal. I see no obstacle to building as many as are needed. There is plenty of coal in the U.S. and abroad for many years to come, particularly if our electric power industry moves away from coal, which they would if coal became more scarce as a result of demands on it for liquefication. As to its sustainability, it is sustainable as long as we have enough coal to feed the plants, which we will for many years to come. Fischer-Tropsch was invented in the twenties, and has been improved for many years since then. It was first used on a large scale by the Nazis, because they had no other source of gasoline. It was also used by the South Africans through the apartheid years for similar reasons. Certainly if your choices are $25 conventional oil, or Fischer-Tropsch fuel, you're going to buy the $25 oil gushing out of Saudi wells. However, in the peak oil scenario, oil is very expensive. This makes Fischer-Tropsch cheaper than the alternative. Sasol claims that they can produce gasoline and diesel for $20/bbl equivalent. I doubt that number, and am more disposed to believe numbers in the $45 range. However, our economy could continue chugging long just fine with oil at $45/bbl.

In your previous comment, you asked for a battery that is capable of high enough energy density to carry a tractor-trailer 500 miles. Hydrogen does that. Now, it's not perfectly efficient, and you state that we would be better off burning natural gas directly rather than using hydrogen. If the energy source is natural gas, I agree. Burning natural gas in an internal combustion engine is a piece of cake, as evidenced by the thousands of CNG vehicles currently on the road today as part of various fleets. However, the question was a battery. If we have renewables or nukes, we can produce large amounts of electricity, but cars can't have a power cord dragging behind them. Hydrogen lets you build a bunch of nuke plants, and use that energy to drive your car.

From your comments, it's clear that you are no physicist. I am very well acquainted with thermodynamics, and nothing I've referenced violates any of those laws. The energy sources available to us when oil starts to decline are natural gas, solar, wind, and nuclear. Please explain to me how switching gradually to these sources is a violation of any known physical law.
posted by cameldrv at 9:14 PM on October 18, 2004

Since you are advocating turning perfectly useful fuels like natural gas and coal into diesel and gasoline - which must lose energy in the process due to thermodynamics, therefore wasting a substantial fraction of the energy therein - I cannot help but assume that you are also not a physicist. And I do admit that I am not.

Also, hydrogen will not let us build a bunch of nuke plants. Turning coal, oil or gas into hydrogen is wasting valuable energy that could be used more directly to build those plants, and in my personal opinion should be. Immediately. In the same way that the Chinese are.

But you can't put nuclear energy directly into a car, unless it's an all-electric car. Unless you're thinking of using nuclear-electric power units like those which power the Voyager, Galileo and Cassini probes?

Fischer-Tropsch is not a process for producing energy. It is a process for converting natural gas or coal into diesel or gasoline.

Yes, at an energy loss of at least 34%, according to the only info I can find easily. (PDF link) And looking at the very high temperatures and pressures involved in some parts of the process (which need to be generated by burning something, or electrical heating which needs to be generated by burning something), I suspect strongly that they're fudging the numbers; I don't know the source of this document but I suspect it's from someone trying to "sell" the product. Even if they're not fudging, you are admittedly wasting one-third of the energy in the conversion, which is really dumb if you are facing a general energy shortage.

So, Fischer-Tropf is a process of losing valuable energy, which it seems you would apply for the sake of keeping fuel-guzzling SUVs on the road.

As to its scalability, the only questions are whether you can build enough plants, and whether there is enough coal.

Well, there's lots of coal. But the economics of building those plants just to throw 1/3 of that coal away making gasoline simply doesn't make sense. It says in that PDF that the plant in SA produces 190,000 barrels a day worth of motor fuels; according to this, US gasoline demand is approximately 8.517 million barrels per day. So, we'd need at least 44 plants the size of the one in SA to make that happen. And that's just gasoline, not including diesel and jet fuel. I don't know how much it costs to build and run such a plant, but I'm sure the cost is not small. Be sure to factor that into your equations, because it affects the energy efficiency of the plant as opposed to the process. Important distinction.

Note that SA built the plant to create motor fuel in the case of world economic sanctions against them - not as a cost-effective alternative to imported oil, but as a "lifeline" supplier for essential uses in times of scarcity, thus making it worthwhile for them. And it could be worthwhile for us under such circumstances - but fuel made under that process, in a time of scarcity, will not be finding its way into mom's minivan for daily excursions to Wal-Mart.

Switching gradually is not a violation of physical law. But processing gas and coal which are already nicely burnable into something else, losing energy in the process, is a terrible waste of otherwise useful energy content.

There is plenty of coal in the U.S. and abroad for many years to come, particularly if our electric power industry moves away from coal, which they would if coal became more scarce as a result of demands on it for liquefication.

Why should we liquefy it, wasting energy, to put it in personal cars, wasting more energy, when it's perfectly good fuel for generating electricity as it is? Why throw calories to the wind when we can make better use of them? Why not use it solely for generating power, so that industry can continue to develop and build things like nuclear plants and wind turbines? Wasting energy that we really need would be dumb.

Better to use coal specifically for electrical generation and vital high-temperature manufacturing processes, natural gas for heating and essential transportation, and stop burning valuable gas in our cars.

Which would necessitate the dismantling of Suburbia, since under those circumstances people would not be able to commute 40 miles to work anymore, let alone ship food from California to Connecticut.

By the way, would appreciate any real physicists reading this to step in, whether to bolster me or shoot me down.
Thanks.

Honestly, I'd rather stay here in LA and ride my motorcycle every day, filling my tank for $1 a gallon, and not have my lifestyle change too much. That would be great. Trouble is, it doesn't seem likely at this point, and that sucks.

BlackLightPower? I see a lot of "may do this" and "may do that" in the pitch. I smell the signs of Junk Science in there, such as in:

"BlackLight Power (the "Company") cells generate energy through a chemical process ("BlackLight Process") which the Company believes causes the electrons of hydrogen atoms to drop to lower orbits, thus releasing energy in excess of the energy required to start the process." (emphasis mine)

Believes. Uh huh. Suuuure.

Releasing energy in excess of the energy required to start the process violates thermodynamics. And, if the hydrogen electron is in a higher energy state, it's by definition because there has been an energy input into the hydrogen to raise it to that state from the base orbital. Nice try.

Let's see a few independent studies confirming what these guys "believe." If it can be confirmed, I'll invest my life savings in that company, because they will make more money than God.

Let's see a working, independently provable protoype, please.
posted by zoogleplex at 10:37 PM on October 18, 2004

Canadian tar sands have a huge reservoir of oil in them, but it's very energy intensive to get it out. I did read a Wired article that there's been some improvement in efficiency there, so that's a hopeful development, but to ramp up production there to levels that will sustain current standards of living in the US and Canada will take too long.

What's this 'we' stuff all of a sudden?
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 10:59 PM on October 18, 2004

You're quite right, stavros, I apologize. Nobody should assume that Canada will just hand it all over, NAFTA obligations notwithstanding... you do know that NAFTA obligates Canada to sell oil and gas to the US whether that means you go short or not, right?

Of course, it's possible our government, pushed to an extreme, might try to invade and just take it. which would be ghastly.

But, point well taken. And just another log for the fire, so to speak.
posted by zoogleplex at 11:17 PM on October 18, 2004

Why don't you put your money where your hype is? According to Greenspan, 2010 contracts for oil are selling for $38 a barrel. If that sounds cheap to you then buy now and makes some money later.
posted by euphorb at 11:24 PM on October 18, 2004

euphorb, did you scroll down and read the rest of that article, where it says this?

"Six years ago, the December 2004 oil futures contract was trading at about $19. The only information about the current $55 price per barrel of crude oil was dead wrong.

Why should the contract maturing in 2010 do any better predicting oil prices six years out?"

Also,

"Where Greenspan sees value in the 2010 oil futures contract, energy traders just roll their eyes.

'I'd be skeptical to draw any conclusions' from the 2010 futures contract, [Rick] Mueller [senior oil analyst at Energy Security Analysis Inc. in Wakefield, Massachusetts.] said."

Predicting prices 6 years out doesn't jive well with free-market economies. Especially when you know demand is growing and aren't sure about supply.

I guess the proof of this would be to see if anyone actually bought a Dec. 2004 contract for $19/barrel and actually receives the oil for that much. If so, someone will have lost a buttload of cash and probably go bankrupt. You don't stay in business long making deals like that one.

That whole article, in fact, is quite snarky about Greenspan, and I tend to agree with it, based on past performance.

Pass.
posted by zoogleplex at 11:49 PM on October 18, 2004

Does anyone in Canada have anything to say about the possiblilty of strip-mining most of your country in order to keep USian SUVs on the road?
posted by thatwhichfalls at 11:56 PM on October 18, 2004

Why throw away a third of the energy to create gas? Because people like cars. They're willing to pay a premium to drive highly fuel inefficient vehicles even though we are currently running out of the fuel that drives them.

If they do run out of fuel to drive them, and somebody comes along and says hey, we can get your fuel like this, people will embrace that because they don't think about the implications of waste, and in America at least, they don't live in a planned economy that could compel them (short of taxes (not likely) or excessive cost) to move away from what they're comfortable with.

We're going to keep burning energy full steam ahead, and if we have to throw away a third of it to get the same bang for the buck (or buck thirty as the case may be), that's what we're going to do. You're arguing as though people were actually making rational cost benefit decisions. They aren't.

They may use that power generation to create hydrogen rather than gas, but we're not going to give up cars until there's simply nothing left to push them, and even then, it will probably get pretty mad max for a good long time.
posted by willnot at 11:58 PM on October 18, 2004

turning perfectly useful fuels like natural gas and coal into diesel and gasoline - which must lose energy in the process due to thermodynamics, therefore wasting a substantial fraction of the energy therein

The same is true of turning crude oil into refined products, and turning petroleum into electricity. So?

That there is going to be waste in the process is inevitable, as you note. The only question is whether or not the process, including the waste, is still economically viable.

Taking 100 BTUs worth of coal and turning it into 65 BTUs of diesel/gas substitute might be entirely sensible, if it's cheaper to get 65 BTUs of diesel/gas substitute than to get 65 BTU's of the real thing, and if 65 BTU's of diesel/gas substitute is more useful in one way or another than 100 BTUs of coal.

Even if they're not fudging, you are admittedly wasting one-third of the energy in the conversion, which is really dumb if you are facing a general energy shortage

There's no general energy shortage. There's still shitloads of coal and great big piles of uranium, at least if you allow breeder reactors. Peak-oil predicts a petroleum shortage. Not the same thing.

But you can't put nuclear energy directly into a car, unless it's an all-electric car

Not a long-term problem. Throw a rail down the center of a lane and power the cars directly. Battery life becomes a nonissue if all you need it for is the last mile or two.

Why should we liquefy it, wasting energy, to put it in personal cars, wasting more energy, when it's perfectly good fuel for generating electricity as it is?

Because it might well be cheaper to run cars on liquified coal derivatives than to throw down the electric rails in every lane.

The alternative path -- burning coal, wasting energy in the process, to generate electricity, with more waste in the process, to send electricity, with more waste in the process, to power cars, with more waste in the process -- is also wasteful. Maybe less wasteful, maybe more.

Releasing energy in excess of the energy required to start the process violates thermodynamics

The hell it does. Starting a fire by dropping a match onto a puddle of lighter fluid releases energy in excess of the energy required to start the process. Doesn't mean that BlackLight stuff isn't crap, though.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 12:00 AM on October 19, 2004

"BlackLight Power (the "Company") cells generate energy through a chemical process ("BlackLight Process") which the Company believes causes the electrons of hydrogen atoms to drop to lower orbits, thus releasing energy in excess of the energy required to start the process."

These would be those special, magical orbits hitherto unknown to our primitive earth science yes?
posted by thatwhichfalls at 12:11 AM on October 19, 2004

What about increased efficiency? If we doubled the average MPG of every vehiclle, would it not double the amount of energy available? It seems like increased efficiency could smooth out the curve for generations.
posted by stbalbach at 1:47 AM on October 19, 2004

Rou_X and willnot have made most of my points for me, but the bottom line is that as long as it is economically feasible to have cars, we're going to have them. People moved to the suburbs because they like living there. They're not going to dismantle them just because we have to build a few chemical plants and mine some more coal to do it. Fischer-Tropsch is far from the only method of getting liquid or gaseous fuels capable of powering cars either. There are lots of other alternatives, such as biodiesel, ethanol, hydrogen, direct natural gas, thermal depolymerization, etc. All of these (including hydrogen) can run in a modified internal combustion engine, and are economical if people are willing to pay $2-$2.50 per gallon equivalent of gasoline.

This was my essential point about the psychology of peak oil. It's all wrapped up in environmentalism, which is admirable, and certainly we have other problems with energy consumption than running out of it. The issue is that peak oil is like a dream problem for environmentalists because it forces the issue on burning oil. Ultimately you see the dismantling of the suburbs to be a good thing, and so if we have a minor problem in maintaining our economy, we should just chuck the whole thing and go to a dramatically lower standard of living. As long as there are viable alternatives available, people are not going to allow this to happen. They may drive smaller cars if gasoline gets too expensive, but they're not going to give them up.
posted by cameldrv at 6:27 AM on October 19, 2004

In your previous comment, you asked for a battery that is capable of high enough energy density to carry a tractor-trailer 500 miles. Hydrogen does that.

Nope. Does not. 150kJ a liter VS 39kJ a liter of energy released when reacted with Oxygen.

Via Joules of energy released per Liter please prove that Hydrogen is a suitable alternative to oil.

Now, compare Hydrogen VS biodiesel energy density.
(Hint: See Don Lancaster's work)


Now finally - research algae based biodiesel.

They may drive smaller cars if gasoline gets too expensive, but they're not going to give them up.

In the US of A "They" don't have a choice. "They" are in a highly morgaged home no where near mass transit to get them to or from their jobs.

Yes, at an energy loss of at least 34%, according to the only info I can find easily. (PDF link)

Go look at what Don Lancaster has to say here. http://www.tinaja.com/h2gas01.asp The energy lost is well documented there.

I smell the signs of Junk Science in there

I'm not willing to condem them just yet.....I'm at your next position:

Let's see a working, independently provable protoype, please.

*smile* Both Blacklight Power and the 'magnetic motor' people have that same hurdle to cross. Blacklight 'made a splash in 1999' and claimed 'products should be out in 7 years.' The 'magentic motor people' claim to be 'tooling up a manufactoring plant' So both groups are close to a 'put up or shut up' place.
posted by rough ashlar at 7:28 AM on October 19, 2004

zoogleplex: This is similar to the problems so far with fusion: it takes more energy to fire the reaction than you get out of it.

If the US wasn't busy stalling on ITER while cancelling its own fusion projects, perhaps more progress could be made. It isn't producing a positive return yet only because nobody's yet built a fusion reactor big enough. Doing so is very complicated and expensive, but it's an engineering problem, not a theoretical physical limitation.

cameldrv: Ultimately you see the dismantling of the suburbs to be a good thing, and so if we have a minor problem in maintaining our economy, we should just chuck the whole thing and go to a dramatically lower standard of living.

Well, I don't think anyone is going to admit to thinking of it in terms quite that simple. The scenario is more that gradually increased oil prices might have a "bad" effect on the economy, stressing it out until it crashes. When an economic system ceases to operate effectively, all kinds of dramatic stuff can happen, as has been demonstrated in the past more than once. That question is dependent less on whether we'll run out of oil and gas, and more on just how robust our global economic networks are.

Switching to coal won't really solve the problem, since there isn't an unlimited supply of that either. If we start using it to fuel our cars, we will (based on the admittedly not-very- detailed projections I've seen) start running short of it within the lifetimes of at least some people here.

Improved fuel efficiency of motor vehicles can make some difference, but on average over the past fifty years we have already improved it quite a lot, and in that time the amount of consumption has nonetheless been steadily rising. So I don't think it's a real solution in the long run. Like all the temporary replacements for conventional oil, it just buys a bit more time.

(I find it incredible that people are still talking about Blacklight Power.)
posted by sfenders at 7:53 AM on October 19, 2004

That there is going to be waste in the process is inevitable, as you note. The only question is whether or not the process, including the waste, is still economically viable.

The only reason the waste has been economically viable up to now is that the energy contained in the oil has been far in excess of the energy required to extract it and process it. This is because the energy in the oil represents millions of years of solar energy stored in biomass, along with millions of years of heat and pressure energy within the earth to transform it to oil (according to our current understanding of the process). That's why burning oil gives the illusion of "free energy." When you're getting 30 times or 10 times as much out as you put in, you can afford to waste a lot of it.

Starting a fire by dropping a match onto a puddle of lighter fluid releases energy in excess of the energy required to start the process.

Correct, because of what I just said above. The lighter fluid represents a vast amount of stored chemical energy that originally came from the sun and underground heat and pressure.

I'm trying to reinforce the point that the high energy density of oil is actually an "anomaly," in that it's stored energy from millions of years of input that we can extract and release easily. People seem conditioned, because of the nearly "free energy" effect of this - a bit of luck - to believe that other energy sources will offer the same excess capacity. They will not and cannot.

rough ashlar's pointing out that petroleum diesel offers "150kJ a liter VS 39kJ a liter of energy released when reacted with Oxygen" is exactly what I'm talking about. The stored 150kJ of energy is from long biological and geological processes.

And no matter what you do, creating that 39kJ worth of hydrogen requires that you burn at least another 39kJ of energy - no better than 50% efficiency possible in the chemical reaction that makes hydrogen. Up until recently, getting that 150kJ of diesel to a usable state has taken as little as 5kJ of energy, which is what has made petroleum such an amazing resource, far better than wood or coal. Simply because there's more solar/biological/geological energy stored in it.

In another example, hydro power is pretty cheap for a similar reason: it's harnessing a portion of vast kinetic energy formed by the flow of water down a river. But that energy is generated by solar power which evaporates the water and unevenly heats the atmosphere so that it rains out, accumulates, and flows downhill under the force of gravity. We extract only a tiny fraction of the total energy of that cycle, and it's economical because WE are not inputting much energy to capture the power.

You're arguing as though people were actually making rational cost benefit decisions. They aren't.

Oh believe me willnot, I'm well aware of it. I'm staying away from that in this thread and sticking to the physics, however. :)

On preview: sfenders, yes thanks for pointing out the real problem, which is the global economic system and how it will react to non-cheap energy.
posted by zoogleplex at 7:57 AM on October 19, 2004

(I find it incredible that people are still talking about Blacklight Power.)

My 'interest' is in the idea the perhaps, in the world of plasma physics and generation of material science in the plasma world, Mills got lucky and found something 'interesting'.

He's made claims of non-rusting metals and this 'superbattery'. So fine, lets see a product. They are over 1/2 way to the timeframe they gave to a shipping product. Harpers wrote a glowing article in 1999, lets see someone do a followup.
posted by rough ashlar at 8:11 AM on October 19, 2004

Hydrogen is a loosing proposition. Don Lancaster explains it quite well.

Wow, cool. Don Lancaster!
posted by kindall at 9:39 AM on October 19, 2004

I did a bunch of internet digging today to try to find opposing views to the Peak Oil theory. I found a lot of crap - welcome to the Web, hehe - but I did find one set of memes about Russian-Ukrainian "modern theory" of abiotic petroleum formation that sounds interesting. There's not a lot of info, and most of the Peak Oil websites discredit or downplay this and its US proponent J.F. Kenney, but it's interesting to look at and there is a paper describing an experiment that seems to indicate petroleum formation is a deep-earth mantle region phenomenon. Certainly worthy of further investigation.

However, it's awfully murky to try to see through what's going on. I would just like to get a better picture of who's accurate in the debate.

The physics still applies though; oil is stored energy of extremely high quality, so we get more out of it than we put in to retrieve it.

The questions are: IS the "cheap" supply relatively short, as the Peakniks say, or is there a lot more cheap oil we haven't started drilling for yet; and will there be shortages severe enough to cause major economic difficulties?

Hard to tell from what limited info I can dig up on the Web. :\
posted by zoogleplex at 4:16 PM on October 19, 2004

isn't Don Lancaster that guy everyone makes fun of over at sci.energy.hydrogen?
posted by jacobsee at 6:44 PM on October 19, 2004

Don Lancaster was a 'mover and shaker' (as it were) in the Apple ][ days, and used to do the 'here is a circuit that has been built to do something' thing.

Mr. Lancaster's collection of links is based on physics and math as to why hydrogen is a bad idea.

One thing his links do not point out is that, if there was this massive fuel cell existance, eventually the platinum would 'run out' - peak platinum at it were. A platinum atom in the waste water here, a atom there and rather quickly you are talking platinum all over.
posted by rough ashlar at 8:17 PM on October 19, 2004

Well, platinum is recyclable/recoverable at least. But it is a potential problem. The other thing about platinum is that most of the platinum on earth comes from mines in South Africa, which would make the world dependent on yet another dubious nation.
posted by zoogleplex at 10:25 AM on October 20, 2004