DrumBeat: October 7, 2006
Posted by threadbot on October 7, 2006 - 8:15am
Topic: Miscellaneous
Oil, Smoke, and Mirrors is an independent 50 minute documentary on peak oil, 9/11 and the war on terror. Watch it online, free at Google Video.
PDVSA said to halt gasoline to U.S., company denies
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Oil traders and ship brokers said on Friday Venezuela's PDVSA state-owned oil company had stopped exports of unleaded gasoline to the United States, but the company denied the reports.Traders and brokers said the stoppage also included Cuba and was due to persistent refinery problems.
The global economy is set to start shrinking as the supply of oil goes into decline. Big business will fight ruthlessly to protect their share of the pie.
Supply Chain Digest worries about Getting the Fuel Surcharge Genie Back in the Bottle.
Conspiracy Theories Abound as Oil Prices Fluctuate
ConocoPhillips backs long-term production view
ConocoPhillips said it still expects a long-term compounded annual production growth rate of 3 percent including oil from the partnership with EnCana Corp., announced earlier on Thursday.
States may make own rules on furnaces
The Energy Department on Friday proposed to let states decide whether to increase the required efficiency of residential furnaces much beyond what's now on the market, rejecting calls for significantly tougher national standards.With consumers facing high heating bills each winter, furnace efficiency has become an increasingly important matter for both keeping down costs and saving energy.
All can play part in beating global warming
Study Says Lab Meltdown Caused Cancer
Radioactive emissions from a 1959 nuclear accident at a research lab near Simi Valley appear to have been much greater than previously suspected and could have resulted in hundreds of cancers in surrounding communities, according to a study released Thursday.Chemical contamination from rocket engine testing at the site continues to threaten soil and groundwater in the area around Rocketdyne's Santa Susana Field Laboratory, the study also found.
Clampdown on air travel 'a must' for Britain to meet climate target
Nigeria violence underscores lawlessness
Attack helicopters battled speedboats full of armed fighters for control of key oil installations. Seven foreigners were abducted from a residential compound, and militants claimed dozens of soldiers were killed. Even by the standards of Nigeria's oil-rich southern delta region, it has been a bloody week."There is no rule of law here. The AK47 rules," says Anyakwee Nsirimovu, a human rights lawyer based in Rivers state, which has been worst hit by the violence.
EU seeks global energy fund to boost investment in poor nations
Statoil Says Norway's Biggest Gas Field Will Deliver
Statoil ASA, Norway's largest oil and gas company, said it will maintain natural-gas deliveries even though production from Troll, the country's biggest gas field, will be lower this year and next.
Germany aims to slash energy consumption by 2020
Higher Oil Prices Prompt Israel to Search for 'Black
Gold'
Eni chief puts price 'in perspective'
First of all, prices are not very high. Sixty dollars a barrel is not very high. If they were high, the American consumer in particular would behave differently. As long as each American consumer burns 26 barrels of oil per year against 12 for Europeans, this means that the prices are not high. High means that people start to say that I can use my energy better.
Greenspan says U.S. trusts Alberta to deliver oil
EIA - Coal Production in the United States - An Historical Overview
Carbon capture: climate savior?
Pondering a future after oil peaks: Two Orange County supervisors discuss whether local government has a role to play.
Assessing GM's Fuel Cell Strategy
The automaker plans to begin rolling out a test fleet of fuel-cell cars, but some experts say it's a mistake.
Somehow I get the idea you don't sleep much. I was looking back at the oilsands EROEI posts yesterday, and find you there late, and here again early.
Most of what I found on the subject so far, Hanson, Heinberg, Kurt Cobb, refers to what Youngquist said 9 years ago?!, and even then not conclusive. They vary from "more in than out", to 2 barrels to produce 3.
I would like to find out, being here in Canada makes it all the more relevant. We'll keep digging. Numbers from Suncor et al. are not ideal, I think. Exact figures on natural gas use would be useful.
Sometimes that is the case. I slept about 6 hours last night. I woke up early to check in, with the intent of going back to sleep. But somehow that never seems to work out.
Most of what I found on the subject so far, Hanson, Heinberg, Kurt Cobb, refers to what Youngquist said 9 years ago?!, and even then not conclusive. They vary from "more in than out", to 2 barrels to produce 3.
Oil sands numbers have been very hard to come by. I used the 3/2 figure for a long time, but was always bothered by the observation that such a low EROEI would attract so much capital. I had a feeling for a long time that it had to be higher than that. I did the rough back of the envelope here:
http://www.theoildrum.com/story/2006/6/19/1571/97105#18
Another poster said Suncor claims 8/1. From the article he linked to:
I suspect the real answer is somewhere in the middle. But I want to make it clear that I do not advocate tar sands development. I have warned for years that Canada couldn't possibly meet their Kyoto committments and develop tar sands, and it looks like they are realizing the same. But instead of slowing down on tar sands, it looks like they will ignore Kyoto.
Canada is 24% over their 1990 emissions (early '06, undoubtedly even more now). Kyoto says they have to be 6% under by 2012. Hence, they must cut 30% of present emissions.
Oilsands operations, which already are one of the key factors in Canada CO2 emissions, are now projected to triple/quadruple by 2015.
The math is easy: something's got to give.
About ignoring Kyoto: that is not without consequences, it's a legally binding document with stipulations. My guess is they count on more countries not meeting their target. They've singled out Spain, for instance. But Spain is part of a total EU 'package', and can be over if others are below.
Germany has spent billions on meeting their target, public and private investment. Will they be idly silent while others don't invest that kind of money? Or will they claim unfair competition for their industries?
Each country that refuses or fights it means that the rest have to work that much harder doing it just to stand still and of course that does put them at a serious dis-advantage economically compared to the country's that do not follow it.
Sure, we are unlikely to powerdown when gasoline is around two bucks a gallon. You tell me, would our commitment really be exactly the same when gasoline is ten, or twenty bucks for the same gallon?
let me give you a example, during the great new york blizzard at bars milk was served more often then bear. not because the milk would spoil. but because it became a status symbol to those who could afford it after the price spike. people bought it simply to have a glass of it, to tell people around them that they can afford it.
this will happen with gas, the more the price rises the more people who can afford it will use it because the more it will become a status symbol.
Of course the joke is that neither one really means anything. They are both stupid point cases in a broader (and "uncollapsed") economy.
Now I'm boggled that you want to continue down to ... river beds? You are a long way afield from the original question.
My comment:
Please realize that treaties and agreements and arrangements and understandings are what we do as social animals. Creating a 'logical' case for the war of all against all does nothing to describe the world in which we live.
the kyoto protocol and the power-down protocol are technically a treaties but they requires all country's sign on and agree to what it says.
a normal treaty is only between a small handful of country's, this treaty has one thing kyoto and and what a peaceful power-down lack. the counter weight that there will be immediate consequences if the treaty is broken by either a governing body like the U.N. or the neighboring country's to the ones who signed the treaty.
In this respect it is like other international treaties, such as for example the treaty banning the production and use of landmines.
In August of 2006, 165 nations were signatories to the Kyoto Protocol.
The USA keeps turning up on the list of non-signatories to international treaties aimed at improving the lot of humanity. This appears to be linked to a special dispensation from God. Or perhaps a pact with Satan.
tell me what punitive measures the current signature nations are doing to punish the nations that do not sign on if they truly do care about this planet?
economic sanctions?
withdrawing any and all diplomatic ties?
military action?
the future of our plant is at stake and playing politics wont help. each nation not signing makes it harder for the rest if not impossible.
But there are different boundaries on EROI analysis - straight direct energy and partial indirect energy correlate (without subsidies) to market ROI. The tarsands have huge (and getting huger) environmental externalities, which if factored in decrease the wide boundary EROI.
1) RR assumes hat natural gas represents the lion's share of needed energy input for the process itself, and that other types of energy input are negligible.
1a) This is questionable since my impression is that the necessary start-up infrastructure costs per barrel obtained are much higher for tarsands than for conventional oil.
1b) In addition, there are other mining and mechanical processing costs for each EACH ADDITIONAL BARREL OBTAINED that cannot be negligible either.
- RR's calculations neglect entirely the matter of energy inputs required for environmental remediation. But Is it really fair to leave environmental remediation energy costs out of the picture? I would argue not; restoring open-pit mine to a condition resembling their original pristine state takes lots of energy, as does cleaing up the tremendous amounts of fresh water used in the process.
- Additionally, RR's calculations have left out the following energy inputs:
3a) The energy cost of obtaining the natural gas itself; if MacKenzie Delta natural gas becomes necessary for future tar sands extraction, that alone represents a pretty considerable energy input, does it not?3b) The energy required to obtain the very large amounts of fresh water supposedly required.
If all of these energy input factors are taken into account, then the final EROEI might indeed be far closer to 3:2 than to 8:1. In addition, there may be other energy input factors that I haven't even thought of.
More broadly speaking, it seems to me that there are some basic principles of energy accounting at stake in my dispute with RR that have considerable significance in many concrete and controversial contexts besides tarsands: for example, nuclear fission, ethanol from corn, ethanol from Brazil, heavy oil from Venezuela, etc. It is very easy to present all of these as viable substitutes for conventional oil based upon superficial EROEI calculations that take into account only the most obvious forms of necessary energy inputs.
Suncor has access to much better data on this than I. I just took published numbers and calculated a rough EROEI. I even indicated that the true EROEI would be less, due to other costs (including environmental remediation, which I mentioned in my post).
RR assumes hat natural gas represents the lion's share of needed energy input for the process itself, and that other types of energy input are negligible.
In my opinion, this is undoubtedly true. People often focus on an entire infrastructure for oil production, neglecting the fact that it produces a LOT of oil. Therefore, the ultimate per barrel contribution is not huge - compared to the per barrel input of natural gas. I just had a very similar debate with an ethanol advocate who did not appreciate this distinction. He wanted to compare infrastructure of ethanol to oil and gas infrastructure, ignoring the fact that one supports much, much higher production rates.
If all of these energy input factors are taken into account, then the final EROEI might indeed be far closer to 3:2 than to 8:1.
It will be lower than 8:1, but not that much lower. The lion's share is definitely the natural gas that goes into each barrel. The EROEI of natural gas extraction and transport is very high. Those other factors (other than remediation) are spread out over a very large number of barrels.
I just did some calculations to see what decline rates would be if we discounted oil by EROI. Using the US data the decline rate increases from 2.2% on average to 9.5%
Production goes down and it takes more energy to get the lesser amount of oil.
This was just a first pass attempt that used numbers pulled off a graph from this ASPO presentation
http://www.aspoitalia.net/images/stories/aspo5presentations/Hall_ASPO5.pdf
Did Engineer Poet take part in the conversation, or were his ideas about transitioning to an electrity-based vehicle system covered?
I would be terrified of the environmental and global warming consequences of the "everything together" that you list. However, from what I have seens of EP's calculations, transitioning to electricity over the next decade or so provides a much better outlook.
No, it came up on a mailing list of TOD editors and contributors. We kicked the issue back and forth. I agree that a transition to electricity would be much better, and I am interested in trying to push the momentum in that direction.
Fan Mail - Part I
The opening section (I felt like the entire exchange was too long to post here, so the rest is on my blog):
I am going to post Part II, where Jim really starts lashing out irrationally, in a couple of days. Part I was long enough, and Jim explicitly denied me permission to post it (because I asked). But I can be a jerk just like you, Jim. :-) And I don't pull punches with jackasses.
http://www.theoildrum.com/user/ziz
who it turns out is the founder of an organisation called the
Forth Coming UK Energy Deficit - FCUKED
I think we should all join!
From Thursday's thread, the following posts.
There are 2.89 mbd missing from OPEC production (or from their statements about it?!).
Between August '06 and 2nd quarter '07, to be precise.
They announced a 1 mbd cut this week, but that still leaves almost 2 million barrels unaccounted for.
Where are they? Anybody?
And what about that non-OPEC production? Will that increase, or is James correct in stating that there is "stagnant production capacity in virtually all non-OPEC countries"? Can't have both.
KSA has claimed repeatedly there will be so much extra non-OPEC oil in '07, they themselves are forced to cut production.
NB: Dave refers to this report by Raymond James.
Thanks
CW
- Gulf Times Aug 23: 29.32mbd (Analyst poll production '07)
- Raymond James: 29.86 mbd (Aug '06 actual production)
Sources don't compare 1-on-1, but the discrepancy is too large to ignore.2/ OPEC has claimed, more than once, they have to cut production because of a glut of non-OPEC oil coming on the market in '07. Raymond James reports: "stagnant production capacity in virtually all non-OPEC countries"
Which one is true? I'm guessing there are people at TOD with non-OPEC '07 forecast numbers
non-OPEC stagnat production - as you mention above Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan have production building. So do Angola and Brazil I believe. But then of course there is the falling production throughout 15 odd producers.
I considered the typo option, but this came from the Vienna meeting in which OPEC agreed to cut production by 1 mbd, which would put them around 28.8mbd, not 29.67.
The full statement in FT:
26.97mbd+2mbd=2006 average demand of 28.97. If there was this typo, they'd have to increase to get to 29,67.
Scotland 1 - France 0
But back to OPEC - I guess they've been producing above quota for some time now - and by and large OPEC have been irrelevant for some years - as their role as swing producers has sunk along with rampant demand that was hard to meet.
But for now they're back needing to withold production, when faced with a whole industry that has been ramped up, and demand subdued by high prices.
Quite honestly I can't see throught this, and I don't think anyone can. The new idea that has caught me though, is the notion of demand and productive capacity narrowing (i.e. prices rising) on the way down - that, I think could be very messy.
On dealing with Canada: "We in the United States trust you,'' Greenspan told 2,500 people who each paid $300 to listen to him in a question and answer session. "When you sign a contract, it doesn't have a Russian signature on it.''
On Ethanol: "There is a possibility ... that the United States may finally be weaning itself off petroleum products,'' said Greenspan, noting that one of every seven barrels of the world's crude oil is consumed on U.S. highways. If you took all the corn we grow and put it into ethanol, it could create 3.5 million barrels a day -- we use three times that,'' he said.
On Global Warming: Greenspan said while he accepted the impact that greenhouse gas emissions have had on global warming and the climate, he said moves to legislate reductions in energy use -- such as the Kyoto protocol -- won't work in a world that operates through free market opportunties.
"The people in charge of these limits are only looking at one side of the issue,'' he said. "It reduces pollution but it does other things, too. As soon as you put a cap on uses of energy, you get job losses and sharp (price) increases.''
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20061006/greenspan_alberta_061006/20061006
On his last pronouncement, I'd rejoin with: "The people in charge of the status quo don't appear to give a crap if the planet becomes unfeasable as a biosphere."