<Midweek Open Thread The Oil Drum A proposal for the windfall profits>

61 comments on One must expect dissent . . . .

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throwaway92614 on October 28, 2005 - 2:08am Permalink | Subthread | Comments top
Silly, silly man. This quote:

> Today Alaska contains 18 billion bbl. of
> off-limits crude. We've embargoed at least
> an additional 30 billion bbl. beneath our
> coastal waters.

Translation: we have embargoed less than three years at present world consumption rates. If you divide by US consumption only, then a whopping 12 years of this supposed "embargoed" oil. Then what?

> And we could fuel many of our heavy trucks
> and delivery vehicles for a decade with the
> 20 billion bbl. worth of natural gas we've
> placed off limits in federal Rocky Mountain lands.

Bozo detector: We don't fuel heavy trucks or delivery vehicles with natural gas. Neither is natural gas measured in barrels. Have a nice day.

> He points out that "General Patton's Third
> Army completed its roll across Europe on
> coal liquefied with German technology."
> Which is something I must confess to not
> knowing.

German technology in this case involved massive slave labor, mining the coal and transporting it for liquefaction. No way we can scale that to even a fraction of our conventional oil use today.

Besides, I've heard some Simmons articles saying that a lot of remaining coal is lower-quality brown/soft coal, not the good hard anthracite of yore, which is largely gone.

Kurt

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Stuart Staniford on October 28, 2005 - 2:18am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
It is actually common in the oil/gas industry to refer to "boe" - barrels of oil equivalent, meaning all contents of a reservoir. We had some discussion of CTL here. It's almost certainly feasible, at significant capital costs and with significant climate impact, and with a possibly-not-adequate ramp-up rate. It may actually be that lignite has some significant advantages over anthracite for CTL as it comes with a significant supply of hydrogen along with the carbon, whereas anthracite is much more just straight carbon (thus requiring more water input to the process).
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throwaway92614 on October 28, 2005 - 2:30am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
But he's not talking boe, he's speculating on direct fuel usage. Sure, we can convert those vehicles to use CNG but it's not a freebie! I still contend he is hand-waving on a grand scale, and yet without even having done the back-of-envelope math.

Besides, if we could freely convert those NG boe into useful syncrude, it's still only 20bln bbl, less than one year at world consumption rates.

As to lignite's use in CTL projects, I suspect that the overall energy density problem weighs higher: lignite just takes more volume and mass for a given amount of useful energy, if I understand it correctly.

I am sure when the peak oil crunch becomes apparent, there will be drilling, mining, prospecting on a scale that may make today's efforts look trivial: oil, coal, natural gas, uranium deposits... everything will be furiously developed, but I doubt that anything will "save" us.

Meanwhile, people keep breeding. Stopping the rampant rabbit breeding is the ONLY thing that will save us. Until exponential growth stops, all is moot, because even 1% exponential growth will double in a constant period of time, as I'm sure you are aware.

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JD on October 28, 2005 - 6:30am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
As to lignite's use in CTL projects, I suspect that the overall energy density problem weighs higher: lignite just takes more volume and mass for a given amount of useful energy, if I understand it correctly.

Nazi coal liquefaction was based on the hydrogenation of lignite:

"Hydrogenation also had experienced greater development because brown coal (lignite), the only coal available in many parts of Germany, underwent hydrogenation more readily than a F-T synthesis"
http://www.caer.uky.edu/caerseminar/fsstrang.shtml

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Anonymoose on October 28, 2005 - 8:54am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Remember the overshoot talk. You can only have so much population as you have food. That is an undeniable fact. If the population continues to grow it is only because the global food supply continues to grow. Wait for that trend to reverse and you'll have your population solution. Be glad to live in an area that produces massive food surplus, for populations in such areas should be able to ... not starve to death. Soooo glad that the forces of beyond-my-control put me here in toronto Canada as opposed to, say, starvation-town Africa.
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Leanan on October 28, 2005 - 10:27am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
It sure sounded to me like he was talking about running trucks on natural gas.  Sounds dopey to me.  I drive a natural gas vehicle sometimes, and while it's in many ways comparable to a conventional car, the big drawback is range and power.  It doesn't go as far as a conventional car on a tankful.  The range is supposedly 150 miles, but if you are carrying a lot of stuff, have more than one person in the car, or are running the airconditioner or heater, the range is much less.  Of course it would be less of an issue if we had the NG infrastructure in place, and could fuel up on the road, but still...NG is a much more diffuse energy source than gas or diesel, and I can't imagine running an 18-wheeler with it.  At least, not very efficiently.
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Gloomy on October 28, 2005 - 1:19pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
That NG idea almost knocked me out. We will have NG shortage in US for heating this year and this guy suggests that we divert yet another substantial part of it for fuel! So invest more resources for infrastructure, etc. to compete for an ever declining supply of NG? What a brilliance of mind... Fortunately that idea people are not likely to buy.
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Whitehall on October 29, 2005 - 5:11pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
I didn't say I was arguing for it.  In fact, I've been a public critic of the diversion of NG for vehicles and electric generation for 15 years.
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astronomer1 on October 28, 2005 - 12:43pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
   Patton's Army was only one of several Allied armies in France, Holland and Belgium attacking Germany. I doubt that Churchill and Roosevelt, as well as Montgomery and Eisenhower, relied on them picking up German fuel, as Huber suggests Patton did.
   Much, if not all, of the fuel used to support the troops came via PLUTO - Google Pipeline Under The Ocean for an excellent description of how it was done.
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cerqueira on October 30, 2005 - 2:06pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Not that I subscribe to Huber's views but in a point he's correct - quoting the DOE : "In 1944 General George S. Patton's Third Army was racing across southern France. In his haste to be the first U.S. commander to cross into Germany, however, Patton overextended his supply lines. His armored columns ground to a dead stop. Faced the choice of waiting until he could be resupplied or draining the fuel of captured German vehicles, Patton chose the latter. His tanks and armored personnel carriers continued to steamroll toward Germany, powered by the German's own ersatz gasoline - synthetic fuel manufactured from coal."
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61 comments on One must expect dissent . . . .

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