The Oil Drum | The End of Exploration?

36 comments on The End of Exploration?

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

| Show without comments | PDF version

Boof on January 11, 2006 - 7:12am

Here's a thought that occurred to me reading the previous open thread. What if all the options had the same EROEI of around say 7? You could avoid all the hassle of hurricanes knocking down your deepwater offshore rig and spend your millions buying a cellulosic ethanol plant in a pleasant farming community. A safe return may be preferable to a bigger return with a high downside risk. This gels with the theory that oil majors are conserving cash to buy out makers of alternative fuels.

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

creg on January 11, 2006 - 8:35am

Nice, thorough work Dave. My concern re the biofuels is soil depletion, and loss of food production. Chemical fertilizers and the tractor already have accelerated the soil/humus depletion.
For instance before fertilizers corn was grown primarily in river/stream bottoms because flooding provided the intensive nutrients needed. As well all farmland needs humus- the cellulosic ethanol needs this as well. I see this area -biofuels as a hazardous "exploration" arena. The world pop. is such that large expansions of fuels from croplands already marginal, will cut carrying capacity.See the pop. thread, Jason Bradford's comments.

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

neuroil on January 11, 2006 - 8:54am

Well, as far as I know, EROEI of ethanol is actually less than 1. Don't forget that growing any product requires a lot of energy not only in the form of mechanical energy (working the soils, seeding, harvesting, transportation, transformation), but also in the form of chemical energy because the fertilizers and pesticides are made from oil. With the best techniques not even yet available, EROEI barely reaches 1,2 or max 2 which is really very difficult to achieve. Will this be sustainable ?

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

joule on January 11, 2006 - 10:26am

The USDA report on ethanol previously cited here concluded that the ethanol-from-corn scheme has an EROEI of 1.34. While at least this is above unity, it is hardly anything to pop champagne corks over.

An EROEI of 1.34 essentially means that 3 units of energy goes into one end of the 'black box' and 4 units of energy comes out the other end. Thus, in a sense, you have 3 units of energy just going around in a circle doing nothing. However, the greater the size of this wheel spinning, the more capital investment is required, so the whole thing is still rather unattractive from an energy (as opposed to financial) standpoint.

And as creg rightly indicated in his post above, soil depletion is an issue which is vitally important but which doesn't get much attention. Our factory farms are already stressing our soil resources badly enough without making it worse by increasing corn production to make ethanol.

Even if the ethanol-from-corn route managed to increase its EROEI to 2, I couldn't get enthused about it. It is just fundamentally a bad idea and poor use of precious resources.

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

porsena on January 11, 2006 - 8:36pm

Water is also an important input for corn, so it would depend where you are. It's probably not a good idea to think of ethanol conversion anywhere in the central USA, where irrigation water is in increasingly short supply. In the Great Plains from Montana to southern Texas irrigation of corn requires 100-300mm more water than the land can supply. In the Great Basin, and particularly in the Southwest, demand exceeds supply by as much as 600 mm. This situation is forecast to worsen with climate change.

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

Nate Hagens on January 17, 2006 - 12:00am

Boof - you are suggesting a 'risk adjusted EROI' to be tiebreakers. But seriously, if I was a corporate CEO and could choose between an expected EROI of 8-1 with chance of hurricanes, labor strikes etc, I might prefer a 6-1 using switchgrass to biodiesel if the proformas exhibited less volatility. I think this is probably too theoretical at this stage as we still dont have an apples to apples comparison for EROI yet. Interesting idea though.

Comments can no longer be added to this story.