In reply to Ywish...
"The actual figure according to above calculation ~ 2,300 hours"

This is your corrected calculation and represents the kind of numbers often seen on TOD concerning the "value" of oil. It is also the kind of arcane idiotic math that undercuts the credibility of those concerned about oil and resource depletion.

Of course, the way this is done is by totally discounting a century worth of hours already expended on the "imput side" to get the oil. The exploration, the drilling the pipelines, the pumps and water seperation units....

Never mind the hours spent in refining the oil, the processing, the man hours every single day at the refinery...yep, it's all in every ounce of "finished product" extracted from oil. Does anyone ever bother to deduct that from the "2,300" hours you mentiion?

Oh, wait, one more little item...the design and construction of the engines used to burn the oil....the hours of manufacturing that has gone into every gasoline and Diesel engine, gas turbine engine, and industrial or residential oil furnace....you see, without these and the hours that have went into designing and building them, the oil would be a useless bit of smelly goo...

And if we engage in the kind of infinite "regress" that is used against the renewables, we have to count the hours in mining the steel and aluminum, smelting it, creating finished high quality steel for the engines and turbines....on and on...

The kind of "2,300" hours work calculation is among the classes of idiotic calculations that are becoming more and more popular to create a type hype and use abstract calculations that have no relation to reality in an effort, I guess, to make a point, a point which like the calculation, has no value.

You have seen the hysteria at oil prices of barely $100 per barrel....so we need not ask what would happen at an oil price of "minimum wage times 2,300 hours of labor....(what, somewhere around $16,000 bucks a barrel (!!!!). Does even wasting time making such "how many angels can dance on the head of a pin?' calculations based on idiotic assumptions produce any benefit? What it does show is an almost psychotic worship of oil above any and all other types of energy, a worship based on fiction and myth as much as on economic history. Westexas is very correct...it is interesting that most of the most hysterical reaction to changes in the energy structure of the world comes out of Texas. The Mecca of the oil industry. Very interesting indeed.

RC

http://www.theoildrum.com/node/2767
Net Oil Exports and the "Iron Triangle"
Posted by Khebab on July 13, 2007 - 8:00am
Topic:
This is a post by Jeffrey J. Brown, an independent petroleum geologist in the Dallas, Texas area.

I always find it interesting that people like Matt Simmons (who are encouraging energy conservation) are widely blamed by some critics for high oil prices, while some major oil companies, some major oil exporters and some energy analysts are--in effect--encouraging increased energy consumption.

The prevailing message from some major oil companies, some major oil exporters and some energy analysts can be roughly summarized as follows “Party On Dude!”

Meanwhile, over on the other two legs of the Iron Triangle, the auto, housing and finance group is focused on selling and financing the next auto and house, and the media group just wants to sell advertising to the auto, housing and finance group. The media group is only too happy to pass on the “Party On Dude” message to consumers.

To some extent, what we are seeing across the board, from large sectors of the energy industry to the auto/housing/finance industry, media and beyond, is the "Enron Effect," i.e., many people know that we have huge problems ahead, but their paychecks are dependent on the status quo.

The suburbanites are caught in the middle of this, although they have a strong inclination to believe the prevailing message from the "Iron Triangle." As in the movie "The Sixth Sense," for most of us the automobile based suburban lifestyle is dead, but we just don't know it yet, and we see only what we want to see.

The Rainwater Prophecy (12/05)
http://www.energybulletin.net/11695.html

Simmons/Kunstler Interview (11/05)
http://www.energybulletin.net/19686.html

It's interesting to see how events have transpired since the Rainwater article and the Simmons/Kunstler interview were published.

ThatsItImout- good job.

Not really. Exactly the same argument can be made on the labour side. How much energy has gone into the infrastructure of the steel mill where someone is a labourer, and the energy used getting the labourers to work, and the calories burnt while they're at home watching TV or sleeping, and so on...?

Roger, I think you are overplaying your hand here. Look at how many employees a refinery employs. Several hundred? Look at how many barrels of product they produce. Several hundred thousand? Aramco employs about half a million people in their oil industry. That is just a guess that is probably way too high. They produce almost nine million million barrels per day. It takes far less than one man hour to produce and refine one barrel of oil. Okay, let's say one whole man hour. That leaves 2,299 man hours left in a barrel of oil.

Ron Patterson