The Oil Drum

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