DrumBeat: November 2, 2006
Posted by threadbot on November 2, 2006 - 9:20am
Topic: Miscellaneous
American car buyers get a case of amnesia
When gas prices take a breather, consumers' common sense takes a hike.NEW YORK (Fortune) -- Who can remember all the way back to last summer, when we had daylight-saving-time, baseball and $3 a gallon gasoline prices?
Not American car buyers, apparently, and you can see the evidence in the results of October auto sales.
Sales of big pickup trucks and SUVs went through the roof - doubling from the year before in some cases. Sales of small, fuel-efficient cars, meanwhile, remained stagnant. It is as if all that moaning and groaning about price gouging by oil companies never happened.
...The supply of oil is not limitless but apparently the current generation of Americans is all too willing to exhaust it by buying bigger cars than they need and letting their children and grandchildren fend for themselves.
Get Rich - While Exxon Goes Broke
"In 1930, we found 10 billion new barrels of oil in the world, and we used 1.5 billion. We reached a peak in 1964, when we found 48 billion barrels and used approximately 12 billion. In 1988, we found 23 billion barrels and used 23 billion barrels. That was the crossover when we started finding less than we were using. In 2005, we found about 5-6 billion, and we used 30 billion. These numbers are just overwhelming." - Charley Maxwell
Less than 20 years from now - not a long time in the big scheme of things - ExxonMobil Corp. could be flat broke.Imagine that. One of the biggest, most outrageously profitable corporations in the history of markets... an awe-inspiring behemoth that rakes in tens of billions per quarter in pure profit... broke. Busted. Kaput. Tapped out. Like a poker player down to the felt.
This isn't some whacked-out, nearly impossible prediction. It's based on the analysis of Charley Maxwell, a veteran analyst with Weeden & Co. in Greenwich, Conn.
Bush Admin Appoints Exxon’s Lee Raymond To Solve America’s Energy Crisis
Dawn of the "solar salon" in U.S. living rooms
Across the United States...bankers and hedge fund managers rub shoulders with philanthropists and solar panel installers. These "solar salons" are orchestrated by Travis Bradford, a former fund manager and corporate buyout specialist, in an effort to hasten what he calls the inevitable uptake of solar power.
Tom Whipple - The Peak Oil Crisis: Virginia Writes a Plan
Apocalypse No!: An Indigenist Perspective -Part I
It’s simple. And obvious. We find ourselves in the midst of the most rapid mass extinction in Earth’s history; we have the power to all-but end life on Earth. We can do so with nuclear weapons, today, in Iran, or simply by turning the ignition switch on our automobiles and gliding over paved surfaces where nothing can live. A little more carbon dioxide, just a little, will tip the scale - unleashing our potential for matching the greatest mass extinction ever – the one called The Great Dying.
Vancouver International Film Festival 2006 — Part 4,
Political documentaries includes reviews of
The Epic of Black Gold and Crude Awakening
The response of the makers of A Crude Awakening is positively Malthusian. One of their talking heads argues that automobiles and air travel will only be available in the future to the super-elite. “Will my grandchildren ever ride in an airplane?” The film essentially argues that the planet has too large a population, especially in the absence of easy access to oil. “How many people can the world support without fossil fuels? Perhaps 1 to 1.5 billion.” The horrifying implications of this startling remark are never worked out.In their doomsday scenario, the filmmakers and their talking heads envision human society going back to a previous century. The present lifestyle is “impossible to maintain.” Once more, the population is blamed, for its “insatiable demands” and its addiction to “gas guzzlers.” They predict the end of “hydrocarbon man,” while suggesting that “homo sapiens will carry on living in some different, simpler way.”
The nine-month chemicals marketplace has been marked by volatility in supply and purchasing that has been slightly lower than expected. While nine-month sales data isn’t readily available, it can be reported that chemical railcar shipments through September were running 1.8% behind year-ago levels. Pricing was relatively stable for some time but then came several unexpected late-summer plant shutdowns that have tightened supply and boosted pricing of ethylene and methanol—just as energy costs began to tumble.
Marathon in Hunt for Canadian Oilsands Partner
BP: Shutting Down Output from Valhall Offshore Norway
BP Plc (BP) is shutting down production and has stopped drilling operations Wednesday at its Valhall field in the North Sea following damaged lifeboat equipment in bad weather, a spokesman said.
Atop Azerbaijan's oil boom: Mr. Aliyev: The country's president is overseeing an uprecedented influx of wealth in one of the world's most corrupt countries.
Russian Oil Output, Exports Fall on Price Drop, Shell Probe
Russia's oil output and exports fell in October after world prices fell and the government threatened to halt work at a Royal Dutch Shell Plc project that's the nation's biggest foreign energy investment.
North Sea oil divers strike over pay
LONDON - More than 900 North Sea divers and support staff have begun an indefinite strike over pay, union officials said on Wednesday, threatening output from one of the world's largest oil producing regions.
Wild Jatropha Stirs Hope of Biodiesel Bounty in India
Namibia: Renewable Energy Could Light Up the Poor
Northeast India separatist group opposes hunt for new oil sources
Government-run Oil India Ltd. is paying US$22 million (€17 million) to Kazakhstan Caspi Shelf — an oil exploration firm based in Kazakhstan — to conduct a seismic survey along a 175-kilometer (110-mile) stretch of the bed of the Brahmaputra River in Assam state.But the United Liberation Front of Asom called the search another federal government move to exploit the region's resources, while bringing little benefit to local people.
Scientists say White House muzzled them
WASHINGTON - Two federal agencies are investigating whether the Bush administration tried to block government scientists from speaking freely about global warming and censor their research, a senator said Wednesday.Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., said he was informed that the inspectors general for the Commerce Department and NASA had begun "coordinated, sweeping investigations of the Bush administration's censorship and suppression" of federal research into global warming.
Storms batter Scandanavia: Oil platform adrift in North Sea
An oil platform carrying 75 people is still drifting off the coast of Norway. Land, sea and air transport was widely disrupted on Wednesday.
Russia to double gas prices for Georgia
MOSCOW - Russia's state-controlled natural gas monopoly said Thursday that it would more than double the price it charges Georgia, further heightening tensions between the ex-Soviet neighbors.The Georgian foreign minister said the price hike was the cost of his nation's turning away from Moscow and toward the West.
Nigeria gunmen kidnap American, Briton
LAGOS, Nigeria - Armed gunmen seized two expatriate oil workers — an American and a Briton — during a raid Thursday on a Norwegian oil services ship off Nigeria's southern coast, oil company officials said.
Flat screen televisions 'will add to global warming'
China stockpiling thwarts global price fall
BEIJING - China will add up to 4 million barrels of crude to its strategic storage tanks by mid-December, an industry source said, more than doubling stocks in a move analysts say is providing a floor to global prices.The new crude will top up China's first state reserves facility near Ningbo to about one-fifth of its capacity, likely spurring debate over whether Beijing will allow its state energy firms to dip into the stocks at will, creating a potentially powerful tool for maximising trading profits.
Given the relative cost and financial risk of Canadian or U.S. nuclear, you have to have a very restrictive set of options or strange idea of economics to conclude a nuclear plant makes any sense.
-- Amory Lovins in an interview with the Toronto Star. Recommended.
I don't mind people having a political stance, but they should make this clear up front, rather than hide their viewpoint in a cost analysis.
where is the surprise?
Rather than explain why the cost analysis is wrong, attack the person who put it together supports fission power exactly how?
At some point its looking like Iran is going to be attacked over the issue of 'you have a nuclear plant and are not making a bomb/no you are making a bomb'. Because nuclear fission power is allowed, 'cover' exists for bomb-making.
Wonder what assigns the external cost of bombing a nation's fission plants? Or having a military 'fighting terror over there so they don't attack fission plants here'? Or having a civilization using wind/PV and forgoing fission due to the high cost?
Yes he is a long-time opponent of nuclear energy. In the '70s as a scientist and as an environmentalist he laid out a "soft path" to energy policy based on increasing efficiency. At that time he suggested that the economics of nuclear power was an illusion and many utilities would have profited handsomely had they followed his advice rather than sink billions into investments that never paid off. (of course, utilities that subsequently purchased those same assets for pennies on the dollar and shifted disposal costs and risk premiums to US taxpayers have done well)
Recently he published a work - Winning the Oil End Game - funded by the US Dept of Defense. In this work he details a technology roadmap to substantially reduce our "oil addiction".
Clearly at this time any stance vis-a-vis fossil fuels, nuclear power and energy could be described as political, economic or ecological. Does any such label add to or detract from the merits of an alternative approach to a reliance on a highly-centralized, capital-intensive business-as-usual demand-driven model for generating, delivering and consuming energy?
The other day, I was browsing in a used bookstore and happened upon a copy of his 1976 book "Soft Energy Paths."
Lovins' stance was adamantly anti-nuclear, yet he endorsed coal as a "transitional" source of energy in his pipe dream of going away from nuclear toward solar and wind!
Granted, few people knew much about global warming in those days, but the facts were certainly known about particulate and sulfur dioxide emissions from coal. Yet, Lovins liked coal better than nuclear energy...despite the fact that coal dumps its wastes right out into the atmosphere!
John McCain's Ethanol Flip-Flop
We need to stop this undue influence Iowa is having on national policies.
Farmers in Colombia could make money with Normal crops so they raised Coca Leaf.
Maybe the Midwest farmers who can't make money raising corn could raise Hemp?
But if they did, How would the CIA increase it's slush fund income like they do controlling the other two examples??
The demand for the 'fiber' part was destroyed by the (many times better) fiber-from-oil market.
For the farmers to start winning again, they'd have to produce products which, when their labor is added, exceed the value of old stored sunlight. Good luck on a solution everyone will find as likeable as the 50 year+ model of oil-> food and oil-> fibers. Good luck on finding a solution that is just as good per acre for the small 40 acre operators as it is for the 400, 4,000 or 40,000 acre operation.
A current example is organic crops. Years ago organic growers were the odd balls of agriculture with a limited market - but they made money. However, as the market has grown, the initiators are being forced out as large-scale organic operations are taking over the organic market. In essence, organic crops are becoming a commodity, not a specialty.
Years ago I was a small-scale, certified organic grower. We had the local market to ourselves. However, we reached a point where we had to either spend a lot of money (mostly for additional greenhouse space) to expand our production or quit. Expansion was necessary to make more than day wages by selling in other towns. As we looked at the capital cost, the cost of hiring people and the transportation cost to additional towns, we said the risk/reward ratio wasn't worth it. We shut down.
Sure, there are still niche markets out there such as producing native plant seed but this won't help production agriculture. There is no good answer.
Todd; a Realist
Biofuels changes the game. Demand for gas for the car could swallow everything farmers could grow. Of course, with the ensuing mass starvation, demand might be lessened. Perhaps you're right after all.
It's unclear what your point is; even corn for ethanol is finite. I get the impression that you don't understand production ag. What will happen, just like llamas and wine grapes, is that farmers will switch out of a corn and beans rotation to corn on corn and create a glut of corn. This will drive the price of corn down and beans up so...
At the same time, by switching to corn on corn, their cost of production will go up since they won't have the residual nitrogen from the beans, possibly have to irrigate more, be paying for GM seed and their profits will likely go down short of an explosive increase in their corn price. This is why so many farm wives work off the farm (and do the farm's books in their spare time) - to balance the variability of income and, maybe, get some benefits like medical. You got to ask yourself, if farming is so great a profit center why does the farmer's wife work as the elementary school secretary?
But, I was addressing profitable farming in my initial response. Growing commodity crops is like being a slave to the bank because it is often impossible to plow down and plant crops without a loan each year.
Is overseas demand going to make a difference to farm profitibility? How are these countries with starving people going to pay for it? Via our tax dollars to subsidize it all? Are US consumers going to watch the price of food go up because the .gov mandates ethanol? How about the reality that new engines aren't tricked into better emissions because of the oxygenates added to gasoline?
In my county, I know of quality wine grape growers who didn't pick last year because they couldn't find a home for their grapes that turned a profit. The same thing will happen to corn growers.
I don't know the answer.
Todd; a Realist
My point is this:
Corn and soybeans are currently commodities because there has been an overproduction relative to world demand. Subsidies paid to farmers for these make things worse for everybody except ADM and Cargill. Farmers get hosed because they take all the risk and are usually in debt for equipment, land, etc. I'm not an ag expert, but my dad grew up on one and I have plenty of close relatives in Illinois that farm including a cousin that does pretty well. But most do work other jobs. That is the present, though. I'm talking about the next few years, and farmers are excited about a huge new market for their produc. Who can blame them?
There is currently under construction in western Washington a biodiesel plant capable of churning out 100 M gallons of product per year. Similar things are unfolding in Iowa and elsewhere. I added a few of them up and came to 1.2 billion gallon capacity in the next couple of years. Assuming they all use soybeans, that would use a third of the current US crop. But even that much biodiesel doesn't make much of a dent in the amount of diesel fuel consumed in the US. Same for ethanol, assuming that the EROEI really is 1.2 or so. Energy consumption is like a black hole--it will swallow everything and not so much burp.
I'm not saying things will turn out good for farmers, as it rarely does.
I guess we are coming from the same place in most ways - at least we aren't arguing about basics.
I believe that farmers are going to take it by over producing. You may be right that they have a few good years ahead. I just believe that farm profits, in the long run, won't come from producing commodtity crops regardless of their demand.
My rationale for this is that consumers are going to whoop and howler about farm "subsidies" just like oil profits if it hits them in the pocketbook. We'll see.
Todd; a Realist
However, offsetting 10% of gasoline use with a sustainable, climate friendly fuel such as sugar cane derived ethanol is exactly the type of step we need to take to completely solve peak oil and global warming. 3-4 more silver bul;ets of the same magnitude and peak oil would be a lot less of a worry.
Hmmm. Nylon makes good casings for bicycle tires. I remember tyres of silk, cotton, and linen, Nylon just as good, or better.
OTOH I have a new silk scarf. Handloomed, wild-gathered silk, vegetable dyes, that sort of thing. Not only do I get looks and compliments, total strangers walk up and want to touch it. You won't get that from oily products.
I think you'd be surprised.
Today's polyester is nothing like the kind that was infamous in the '70s. You'd never know it was polyester.
And I'm going to miss microfiber if it gets too expensive for ordinary peons. It's much better than cotton for athletic wear, because it wicks moisture away from the skin. And I love microfiber dusting cloths.
Then there's nylon stockings...
And the raptors and coyotes would love it too. Need to develop some new products though like Kentucky fried rabbit and maybe buffalo ears.
Seriously though Iowa and the corn belt have seasonal rains and fertile soils. Their production potential for summer vegetable production and for decentralized grain/meat as crop has been displaced by longer seasons in
California, industrialization of meat production, cheap energy and transportation.
My take on this situation is that it is a temporary situation and that energy futures will neutralize this subsidy driven corn/ethanol market for grain.
Best
offer them twice as much to use that land for food rather then making fuel.
As Investors Covet Ethanol, Farmers Resist
Exactly these technologies will be the locomotive of our economy in the first half of this century. One reason is the - almost daily now - growing concern about climate change, the other one is the PO.
Two months ago, I read two books.. Both written by rather famous authors/scientists.
Jeremy Legget concludes in his book "Half Empty" that the coincidence of both phenomenas is a major imperative to act as soon as possible. For him, the renewable energy sources are capable to supply the world's demand, replacing the gap which will occur on account of oil and gas depletion and reducing carbon emissions. So Legget is quite optimistic about the renewables.
Lovelock, in his book "The revenge of Gaia" seems not to be fond of renewable sources. For him, only nuclear/atomic energy is the solution to prevent a real climate disaster. He doesn't use the ecpression "global warming", he writes "global heating". The renewables in his opinion are just a drop in the ocean and will not help us to deal us with the global warming.
Now the question. Two very smart and experienced authors with reputation. Both see the problem(s), however provide very different solutions. Who is more right?
Pity I didn't bookmark it and can't remember what it was called. Perhaps whoever posted the link can do so again. The paper appeared detailed and well-argued. Certainly it gave me a much lower opinion of nuclear energy than I had held.
Or David Fleming's Why Nuclear Power Cannot Be A Major Energy Source.
Look for Factsheet 4, and download the pdf.
Like many other areas - we need a Uranium expert in TOD. Australian listed Paladin Resources - one of the fastest growing stock in the world a couple of years ago - was founded on the basis of a global review of U resources - and they picked the Langer Heinrich prospect in Namibia as their first project.
U prices going through the roof here:
http://www.uxc.com/