ANWR, and a midweek open thread
Posted by Yankee on November 3, 2005 - 4:55pm
What's clogging your mind this week?
I'm thinking about how the Senate just voted to allow oil drilling in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. You know, because that's going to do us all so much good in the long run. While it's doubtful that we'll gain much if we drill in the Refuge ("energy independence"? Yeah, right), it's certain that we'll lose a lot. If you've never seen Subhankar Banerjee's photographs, check them out. You can also read more about why he undertook the project to protect the area from drilling. (More on the story, and the Democratic opposition, here.)
“This order [i.e. capitalism] is now bound to the technical and economic conditions of machine production which today determine the lives of all the individuals who are born into this mechanism, not only those directly concerned with the economic acquisition, with irresistible force. Perhaps it will so determine them until the last ton of fossilized coal is burnt.”
—Max Weber, 1905
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If we accept the imminent peak oil model (peak is between now and 2015), then we should expect that oil and natural gas will be extracted from every economically recoverable deposit we can find. If prices are rising rapidly and the resource is there, why wouldn't we go after it?
http://www.theoildrum.com/story/2005/10/19/23321/213#comments
src: cnn
The rest of the article is behind a paywall at FT, but it does go on to say that NG energy costs are now up to $200/tonne produced, that Chinese producers are currently losing $300/tonne sold, and they'd need $2,420/tonne to make a profit.
Also that producers in other countries are using coal when available, as it's cheaper (but dirtier).
Other interesting stats: The EIA shows average daily world oil production for the first 8 mos of 2005 to be only 1.2 million bls/day more than 2004. OPEC increased by 1.0 million bls, meaning the rest of the world only added 0.2. This is essentially before Katrina came ashore (on Aug 29) and doesn't reflect hurricane losses. OPEC increases are mainly from opening up existing supply, not new supply. It looks like the last quarter numbers for world supply outside OPEC will probably show a significant decline from 2004. I'll wait and see.
Given high price and demand I find these numbers remarkable.
Suppose that conventional crude oil has peaked this year. Then the 300+ million barrels will have to effectively come from deepwater, and so forth.
Personally, I do not want the peak to happen, as it will result in particularly hard economic times. Also, I love cars and will probably never have the privelage of owning a V-8 (I would consider buying one in a year or so if gas holds steady, but if the peak occurs I wouldn't touch one). Perhaps one can infer that I am a member of the younger generation. $2.00 gas does not bother me, as I have never known anything much below that. In fact, I buy premium, and consume as much as possible. The simple logic is that millions of people have gotten years of cheap fuel, and I am about to get screwed. Why not burn it while I can still afford it (because life without it is going to suck). Yes, my attitude is bad. However, I am angry. I am angry that the previous generations didn't give a shit about comming up with alternatives. I am angry that GM recalled the EV-1. I am angry few people care. I am angry that no one is still doing anything (Bush's $1 billion went to oil companies to figure out how to get Hydorgen from OIL! (not that hydrogen is feasible anyways)). I have no choice, I do not have alot of money, and what little I have is about to be destroyed. What a great system we have...
As a child of the Sixties, I can appreciate your love of muscle cars. Who would have known that a Hemi-Cuda you could have hardly given away during the first oil crunch of 1973-1974 would now in 2005 be an easy six-figure car in decent shape. Tis sad, but that era is gone and gone forever. Any vestiges of it are more an more going to entail well-heeled folk splurging on gas to bring their Sixties treasures to one nostalgic car show or the next. These cars are going to be mere icons of a past era, rather than something someone going to seriously use as a daily driver.
If you've got one, you're sitting pretty on a very good investment. If you want one, then you are going to pay and pay and pay. Their price will not be in the least way affected by the price of gas, simply because they have become almost art objects that someone pampers and polishes into extreme old age.
Yet, when you get right down to it, today's high-performance cars are objectively so much better than those grotesque Sixties muscle cars.
However, objective performance is not what it's all about. What it is all about is that certain 'feel' of a large car with massive amounts of low-rpm torque ripping off the line. Only a large-displacement, gas-guzzling V8 engine can
provide that sort of feel. It's the Beach Boys.
While I fully recognize that Sixties muscle cars are today about as appropriate as dinosaurs, still I'd love to go back to that energy-wasteful era just for a few weeks and tear up a little asphalt.
If you've been watching the news about batteries lately, you'd note that there have been several announcements of huge advances in lithium-ion technology; both the cycle life and the charge/discharge rate are about to go through the roof.
What does this mean for cars? It means that any sort of electric car using these batteries and storing a significant amount of energy is going to have enormous amounts of electric power on tap. If the motor etc. can get it to the wheels, you'll have neck-snapping acceleration just like the old days.
The future of hybrids is going to look like this:
d = ½at^2 -> a = 2d/(t^2)
v = at = 2d/t
E = ½mv^2 = 2 m (d/t)^2
m = 900 kg
d = 1320 ft = 402.3 m
t = 13.5 sec
E = 1.6 MJ = 444 Wh
Expending 444 Wh in 13.5 seconds takes 118 kW. If you had a 5 kWh battery capable of discharging at 100 C (quoted for a new Li-ion battery), you'd be able to get 500 kW out of it. I don't see this as a problem.
So you can get twice as much power for half as much energy, and you do.
This is a very gross oversimplification, of course.
The 50% higher comment made me laugh though. Government bodies are going to introduce this mess to the public slowly, so as not to shock the uninformed. Of course, by then it may well be too late.
The trash I have encountered while doing beach cleanup is often from garbage scows that dump at sea, ships that come here to the US with cargo and dump trash before entering port, and illegal bilge dumping by ships. Last trip we came across hundreds of spent hypodermic needles (not oil related), hundreds of diapers (not from little roughnecks), and tin cans (which were labeled in spanish and portuguese). Rig trash is usually composed of chemical sacks, pipe dope buckets, and pallets. We found none of that in recent memory.
The oily tar you see that sometimes winds up on the beach is also not related to production or drilling activities. There are at least 3 oil seeps offshore of the southern end of the island. They have been there for thousands of years, the oil quietly oozing from the sandy bottom all by itself. This is what makes those tar balls we often come across. It's natural, not man-made.
Another source of this oil is diesel from bilge dumping. Diesel gets into the bilge in the engine room. When heavy diesel hits saltwater, it clabbers, like milk does. It makes a nasty, thick scum. THIS is definitely man-made, and not fun to smell, see or step in.
Bilge water is not allowed overboard any longer by drilling rigs or platforms - it is pumped into disposal containers and sent in to processing facilities which land farm it with bacteria or incinerate it.
I live here too. I understand your anger at what happens to the beaches. But once you look into the actual trash and do a little diging, you will discover that the blame shouldn't be on the oil companies, but on the shipping industry and those waste companies that own ships and barges along the east coast, and send their trash into international waters for dumping into the deep ocean....
OF BLACK FLIES. THEIR PRINCIPLE DIET SEEMS TO BE
HUMAN FLESH. IF YOU VISIT THERE YOU WILL FIND THAT
THEY THINK YOUR BODY IS A GOURMET FEAST. ENJOY!!
THE MARKET AS APPROXIMATED BY THE FUTURES
MARKETS BALANCES SUPPLY AND DEMAND AT THE CURRENT
PRICE AS PERCIEVED BY ALL WHO WOULD BUY OR SELL.
THE PRICE IS CLEARLY HIGHER THAN IN PAST YEARS
INDICATING MORE DEMAND THAN SUPPLY AT THOSE LOWER
PRICES. IT ALSO INDICATES MORE SUPPLY THAN DEMAND HIGHER AT ANY HIGHER PRICE THAN THE LAST PRESENT MOMENTARY
NUMBER. IT IS NOT NEEDED TO KNOW HOW MANY BARRELS
OR WHAT PERCENTAGE UP OR DOWN SUPPLY OR DEMAND IS.
THE PRICE IS THE BALANCE POINT. SUBJECT TO CHANGE
OF COURSE AT THE NEXT MOMENT.
I AM, OF COURSE, OFTEN WRONG...
Energy Bulletin has a summary of the Simmons/Kunstler symposium in Dallas, including my comments.
Jeffrey Brown
http://today.reuters.co.uk/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=worldNews&storyID=2005-11-02T124452Z_01_YU E245817_RTRUKOC_0_UK-ENERGY-IRAN-MINISTER.xml
Iran president nominates outsider as oil minister
By Christian Oliver and Alireza Ronaghi
TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad nominated a little-known conservative politician with no industry experience as oil minister of the world's fourth biggest crude producer on Wednesday.
Sadeq Mahsouli, who like Ahmadinejad hails from the Revolutionary Guards, faces a parliamentary vote of confidence in a process that is being watched closely by international oil firms keen to do business with OPEC's second biggest exporter.
A political tug of war over Iran's most prestigious cabinet job has exposed deep rifts in the ruling conservative camp.
Ahmadinejad's first choice was unexpectedly rejected by lawmakers in August, and by naming Mahsouli the president has ditched the second choice candidate he originally proposed to parliament's energy commission.
The appointment of oil minister has traditionally gone very smoothly since the 1979 Islamic revolution.
Political analysts say this is because it has been clear to parliamentarians that the president's nominee had the approval of Iran's all-powerful Supreme Leader.
"Anyone who comes forward who is not approved by the Supreme Leader won't get through parliament," said a Western oil executive who declined to be named.
Ahmadinejad has hit problems because he is nominating close allies and comrades from the hardline Revolutionary Guard, with which he served behind enemy lines in the 1980-1988 war of attrition with Iraq.
"He is trying to replace experts with Revolutionary Guards," political analyst Saeed Leylaz said....
I'm beginning to think of the Rita/Katrina disruptions as short term (2yr) transients on the longer term path. UNLESS - it may be that such disruptions (both GW and political) will be the norm now that supply is tighter. It may be that such events world wide will keep us from being able to effectively utilize as much of the oil on the downward side as we expect. Kind of an icreasing loss that reduces the efficiency of production and disribution.
Because of this, my own expectation is that we've entered a long slide period to be measured in years or perhaps a few decades. In that slide period, oil costs will continue to ratchet upwards and as they do, we'll see "demand destruction" both in the industrialized nations but especially in the poorest third world nations. Zimbabwe won't be the last nation to effectively disappear after being unable to buy oil. There will be a steady stream of these and with that stream will come great hardship and suffering for many people around the world. But for every Zimbabwe that is no longer buying oil, the remaining oil can go just a little bit farther for the wealthier remaining nations.
In places like the US, it's going to feel like a long recession that slowly gets worse, unless some financial trigger just shoves us into all-out depression. And since the feds don't count people who "fall off" the unemployment rolls, the picture may never be honestly reported.
My guess (and I freely admit it's a guess) is that it's what happens during this 5-15 year slide that will determine our fate. If we honestly recognize what is happening, we'll suffer but there are ways to get past this and keep a technological society intact. Lots of key ideological concepts have to change, like unlimited economic growth, but we could still come out the other side with a future.
Of course, our fearless leaders could keep pretending that everything is fine, in which case when we get near the end of that slide, we just go into freefall. I admit to being a tech junkie and would like myself and the rest of the human race to have the advantages that science and technology can confer. But I'm also willing to realize that the dice can still roll snake eyes and we could lose it all.
I keep hoping that the gentlemen who run The Oil Drum will put together a really useful model someday that includes current production, rates of decline, new and planned production plus their rates of decline, plus anticipated demand growth and then let us all take a look at it. That's what my very crude model does and while I intend to try to refine it further as I can, I'm sure that there are people who are far better at this than I as well as having much better data.
Of course, some dramatic new energy source would alter that although I'd still expect a long recessionary period as the world began redirecting investments into new infrastructure based around the new energy source.
If people suddenly start buying e.g. electric motorcycles to get to work, and everybody suddenly starts making only plug-in hybrids for their new car models, the picture could change the other way. A car is something like 17% efficient, while a combined-cycle powerplant can be well over 50% efficient; if we burned oil to make electricity to run cars, we could roughly triple the miles per gallon (as well as eliminating a lot of the refining steps to get the right octane and vapor pressure). Further, anything that runs on electricity can get it from coal, nuclear, wind, solar, hydro....
There's lots of room to improve our efficiency, and once we go electric there is enormous potential for non-fossil energy supplies. It's just a question of how long it takes certain advances to get to market and how fast they're adopted. There is enormous growth potential, so once they start taking off there will be a huge expansion.
Don't you have to account for the efficiency of the electricity transmission and the electric motor in the car? Or are those close enough to 100% that they can be ignored?
Battery losses depend on the battery. Li-ion is supposed to be better than 95% efficient (100% coulombic efficiency is claimed), while equalizing in lead-acid cuts them down to about 70%.
Losses in the charger, controller and motor... call them 5%, 5% and 10% just as an educated guess.
If the powerplant has a 40%-efficient gas turbine (e.g. 300 MW GE unit) and a 33%-efficient steam-turbine bottoming cycle, generation efficiency would be 59.8% (a domestic cogenerator might have an effective efficiency greater than 80%). Taking 5% losses each in transmission and charger brings this down to 54.0%. 5% in battery and controller, 48.7%. 10% in motor, 43.8%.
Not quite three times the 17% figure, but well over 2.5 times as good. The US burns about 9 million barrels of gasoline per day; Saudi Arabia pumps about 10.5. If we saved 5.5 million bbl/day, that's more than half a Saudi Arabia. Not bad, eh?
For example, a couple years of recession (depression) would dramatically impact government (at all levels) tax collection. This will require cuts in services, like police and fire and road building (meaning more unemployment, etc.). In the recent past we got out of this by borrowing money, but what do you do if the money to borrow is unavailable? Why won't it be available? Because there will be no prospects for growth that would make the investment worthwhile. It becomes a vicious circle. This is, in part, why the great depression went on for so many years. It was only by dramatically altering our willingness to take on debt and the way we created debt (war bonds) that got us out of the depression.
Well, that's a simplistic overview of my thinking on the problem - be glad to discuss this more if you like.
- First, it increases the efficiency by over 150%.
- It allows any energy source which can be turned into electricity (which is most of the non-fossil ones) to help run transport; the oil monopoly is broken.
- It creates markets in batteries and other storage technologies to build economies of scale in their manufacture and money to drive research. We already have Li-ion batteries good enough to drive cars for hundreds of miles, and the power levels and lifespan have just made huge gains. All we need now is for the cost to come down, which commoditization does to everything.
Today we get most of our energy from fossil fuels. But California would already get cheaper energy from the solar Stirling dishes than they do from natural gas; PV is coming down, wind has made huge strides, and switchgrass and Miscanthus have enough productivity to fill the gaps and supply our need for plastics and other chemicals.We can get away from oil, and it looks surprisingly easy to do so. The question is, when will we decide to start?
That really depends on how clever we get.
If people suddenly start buying e.g. electric motorcycles to get to work, and everybody suddenly starts making only plug-in hybrids for their new car models, the picture could change the other way."
I am impressed with your optimism and also excited by progressing Stirling engines, Wind and Switchgrass. But --am I going to buy a new hybrid or pay down the mortgage? Invest or go to cash? I think we will have a citizenry beset with fear and inertia.
When people perceive the energy tipping point their reaction might be keep their heads down and not boldly put disposable income towards a new car anymore; their employment may itself be disposable. Middle class "everybody" is disappearing. Inflation and outsourcing are crushing. Purchasing power of the dollar is down 50% in less than 20 years. Now add an energy crisis too.
If the government moved the market to alternatives, or "picked favorites", as detractors like to call it, things might move fast enough to avoid a muli-decade depression. But government doesn't make perfect selections and is, at best, hamstrung by prevailing favorites, while individuals will be as deer, frozen in the oncoming headlights.
bigelow
Some people are going to be buying new cars regardless. The key is to change what people are willing to buy, and thus what the automakers will build.
This is a huge deal. California could have jump-started the PHEV phenomenon in 1990, but instead the CARB wrote the ZEV mandate to exclude PHEV's. By sending the message "Fuel is never going to be cheap again, find your own solutions" both manufacturers and buyers will do just that.
Rich people burn more fuel than poor people; redistributing taxes from payrolls (esp. FICA) to fuel will offset some of that.That's a really good reason not to pick favorites. I proposed removing subsidies from ethanol and hydrogen as part and parcel of an increased petroleum tax. A petroleum tax doesn't tell anyone what to do, just what to cut down on. Once the incentive is there, people will find more solutions than any policy-maker would. The important thing is to leave no loopholes, exemptions, preferences or other things which eliminate reasons to cut their petroleum use or create ways to cheat.
The analogy is that of eating your food stash during a time of famine. While it may keep you going for a while, you are never going to replace it until a time of excess abundance, and that may never come.
So, I tend to thing that the SPR is going to be slowly bled away, from crisis to crisis, and will never be fully topped off again. And if we do decide to top it offl the increased artificial demand will only serve to raise prices. So, filling the SPR will tend to raise prices; and rising prices will discourage filling the SPR.
An emergency kit will generally only last you through one emergency, and no more.
Unfortunatly I think it will happen not to protect the public as it is being presented, but instead as prep for the Bush's next military adventure in the mideast.
Hey - money isn't ever a problem for our government. They have proven that we can spend our way into an ever expanding economy quite easily!
Congress is always authorizing things that for some strange reason never wind up taking place. There are many examples.
I wouldn't hold my breath that the SPR is topped off any time soon. And even if it is, it will just put some more pressure on prices.
"Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld all have their ranches off the grid. They're all running solar and biodiesel. They know what's coming."
http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/dnav/pet/hist/wrpupus24.htm
is different from the 4 week product supplied average here
http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/oil_gas/petroleum/data_publications/weekly_petroleum_status_report/curren t/txt/wpsr.txt
I think this is very important because one shows demand running 2% above last year and the other shows it running 1.7% below last year.
http://www.nafa.org/Content/NavigationMenu/Resource_Center/Alternative_Fuels/Energy_Equivalents/Ener gy_Equivalents.htm
Just note that if you calculate heats of combustion based on reactants and products at their normal states at 25°C, you're going to get the HHV and not the LHV.
Propane boils lower than water, so they can take the waste heat from the steam and condense it down to water and use that to vaporize the propane and then put it through turbines for power.
This is capital intensive because you need huge amounts of radiators to condense the propane, so it only makes sense at high fuel prices. You can pay for the fuel, or for the interest on the cost of making the radiators or cooling towers.
But you get more power per tonne of coal and per tonne of CO2, and you get to strip more SO2 and NO2 pollution (and more Hg) out of the exhaust from the power plant when the steam condenses instead of going up the stack.
The calculations were in a Power + Energy magazine article I read at the Bechtel Engineering library at UCB, I think. Don't know which month or page. I just read the article and shrugged, my interest being solar photovoltaic.
The chemical composition of medium-volatile bituminous coal is about C(1)H(0.75) [81.6% carbon, 5.0% hydrogen] with miscellaneous additions; lignite might be C1H1 plus 38.6% moisture by weight (roughly 2/3 molecule of water per CH pair). Burning the lignite in oxygen, you'd get this:
CH + 5/4 O2 + 2/3 H2O -> CO2 + 5/6 H2O
Burned in air with 25% excess oxygen, you'd get something like this (figures don't add to 100% due to rounding):
70.5% N2
3.8% O2
12% CO2
12.7% H2O
.9% other
The partial pressure of water vapor in this will be .127 of atmospheric pressure. This corresponds to a condensation temperature of about 124 degrees F; above this temperature, you aren't getting any heat by condensing the water.
Note that this is for VERY damp lignite.
You can't get significant useful energy out of a heat engine operating between a temperature of 124 F and ordinary ambient, even if you could withstand the corrosion problems caused by acids condensing out of your stack gases. And that's why the exit temperature of the gases is largely irrelevant; they won't get that low.
Also, you do in fact condense the water steam from the conventional steam generator and use the condensation energy to boil propane for stripping a little extra power.
If you want to know more about propane bottoming cycles and perhaps mercury topping cycles, you will have to look it up on the web from someone who knows more about it then I do. Like I said, I just read it in a trade publication and passed it by for articles on solar photovoltaic.
In my experience, you don't really understand something until you can write a clear description of it. You might want to try re-writing that just for the "aha" that comes when it all falls together.
"Hi Larry. I wanted to know why the product supplied 4 week average here
http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/dnav/pet/hist/wrpupus24.htm
is different from the 4 week product supplied average here
http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/oil_gas/petroleum/data_publications/weekly_petroleum_status_report/curren t/txt/wpsr.txt
I know there is a one day difference but even the previous report showed such huge discrepancy.
The difference is in the end dates 10/29/04-20,391 vs 10/28/04-20,849 (copied that of your message biologyguy-hope you dont mind). But that cannot be explained by a huge supply on one day or no supply on another as it happened last week as well."
Will post reply when I receive it.
W
"Three-dollar-a-gallon gasoline is going to be the good old days," predicts Robert Hirsch, a senior energy program adviser for SAIC, a professional services company.
If you're moving, buy or rent near a bus or subway line. Or look for a place within walking or biking distance of important services.
"Live close to places where you can get the essentials," Hirsch advised.
Hirsch worries that an oil shock could precipitate a global depression. "Hope that your company stays in business, because a lot of companies will fold," he said. "Don't take on a lot of debt because jobs will be in jeopardy and people may have to go into bankruptcy."
http://www.newhousenews.com/archive/lewis110305.html
Summary of his comments (from RogerCO at powerswitch UK:
Peak flow will be in 2008. This is pretty certain from the available good data.
Impacts of peak are already here but hidden in 3rd world
5 year lead time on projects mean future production is known - if demand continues rising at 1.5%pa and existing production declines at average 5% (figures from Exxon and Haliburton) then with known new production we have a 12mbpd shortfall by 2010.