More goings-on around the world
Posted by Yankee on February 17, 2006 - 12:33am
Topic: Supply/Production
Tags: china, iran, oil, opec, refineries, russia, venezuela [list all tags]
TGIF! Let's survey what's happening around the world these days!
- Venezuela's oil minister (also president of Petroleos de Venezuela!) wants OPEC to cut production by 500,000 to 1 million barrels a day.
- China and Iran are about to finalize a multi-billion dollar oil and gas deal:
The report said that an agreement would seal a memorandum of understanding signed in October 2004 under which China's Sinopec would develop Iran's Yadavaran oil field in exchange for buying 10 mln tons of Iranian liquefied natural gas annually for 25 years at a cost of 100 mln usd.
- What do individual countries want: oil that's already been refined in Russia, or their own refineries that can handle the crude they'll buy from Russia?
Ghana is forced to raise fuel prices
Nigerian militants are threatening "total war"
In the U.K., natural gas prices are up
Indonesian growth hit by doubling of fuel prices
The threat is supposedly from the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) and the oil companies must leave the delta by midnight tonight or it will be "total war".
We've heard this kind of thing before but I think these folks are getting serious... NYMEX LSC Future is up $1.32 as of now and rising. Could be an interesting weekend.
Shell oil well on fire in Nigeria
New Nigeria helicopter attack in delta
One of the PeakOil.com mods has a father in Nigeria (petroleum engineer, I think). He says no one is allowed to leave the Shell/BP compound. (He also thinks the end of oil is nigh, and warns that the American way of life is going to change drastically. I think Big Oil knows what's coming. They may not admit it in public, but they know, and they've known for a long time.)
Bodies of fetuses, newborns clog Harare's sewers
Gasoline shortages and 613% inflation are blamed. The sewers are also being clogged by sand. People can't afford detergent any more, and clean their dishes by scrubbing them with sand.
Good thing we don't have one of those. ;-)
First: a poor country can be devastated by a level of corruption that will have a far less noticeable impact on a developed country.
Second: what constitutes corruption? Does the removal of resources at bargain basement rates from a poor country (or use of its labor) by a corparation, constitute corruption? Or is it only the bribes paid by the corporation to officials in that country that count?
Third: I believe that the top levels of our gov't are totally corrupt, but that the corruption has not yet infected everything all the way down the line. So the top of our gov't could be just as corrupt as the top there, but here there are many more layers below that are, if not healthy, at least still functioning.
You might be right about the mafia doing better, but they would also have done a better job with Katrina if only because you can't do business where there are no people.
Seriously, though, I sometimes wonder if those at the top know what's coming...and are looting the country now, while they can.
But the reason I posted the link to that article wasn't that I think that's what will be happening here (at least, anytime soon). The point was demand destruction is occurring. Mostly in the Third World, but it is occurring.
I think this could go one for quite awhile. As long as we can outbid everyone else for the remaining oil, we may be relatively unaffected. As long as the dollar holds up...
The BBC recently deployed its worldwide network of correspondents to produce "Fueling the Future." Go to http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/sci_tech/2006/energy/default.stm to read, hear and watch the results. A diverse snapshot of energy related developments from Cambodia to Canada. Remind your British friends to pay their telly tax!
Howleyj's link is the main page for this extravaganza, here's a direct one to the listenable radio programs, many are well worth the time (don't dally, sometimes BBC radio archives evaporate after a week):
http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/specials/1349_energy/
Perhaps consider it a relaxed version of what will come to a news station near you sometime sooner than you would like. Rather like an erudite after dinner discussion, midst walnuts, port and cigars, in an english country house dining room in 1938...
"I say, that Hitler looks a rum chap."
"Perhaps, but the Sudettenland seems happy enough with the arrangement."
"Algy says he has his eyes on Russia."
"That may be no bad thing, keep 'em both busy for a while, haw, haw, haw!"
"Dash and blast, the fire's getting low and we seem to have run out of logs. I'll ring for Jeeves."
BTW, one does not need a telly licence to listen to radio in UK any more. UK also abolished the dog licence over 30 years ago.
If you've never listened to it I strongly suggest you do, you may be very pleasantly surprised. What better place to start than these programs about a subject that interests you?
Though they did let me down with their coverage of Hugo Chavez kicking out the missionaries:
http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/articles.php?artno=1672
That's the kind of coverage I'd expect from CNN. :-P
This is the index to all the world service programs in the Fuelling the Future series.
http://www.fao.org/docrep/T4470E/t4470e0c.htm#9.%20research%20on%20the%20temperature%20environment%2 0of%20solar%20greenhouse
Temperature increases of +20 to +30 C ( +36 to +54 F ) in midwinter. Intercropping with mushrooms to increase CO2 availability is synergistic, too:
http://www.fao.org/docrep/T4470E/t4470e0d.htm#10.%20integrated%20energy%20self%20served%20animal%20a nd%20plant%20complementary%20ecosystem%20in%20ch
There's a lot we could learn from these folks in China, India and some other developing countries about relatively small scale energy and argiculture.
At new battery for hybrid cars from MIT http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2006-02/miot-mpu021606.php I still vote for the lead-acid Firefly battery at this point - http://www.nanotech-now.com/news.cgi?story_id=13346
This clip claims 1,000 gallons per acre from switch grass http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5183608
How to run your desiel partially on vegetable oil - as he says, "Just bung it in the fuel tank" to about 10-33% http://www.ravenfamily.org/andyg/vegoil.htm
64 MW solar plant in Nevada at 9-13 cents per kWh http://renewableenergyaccess.com/rea/news/story;jsessionid=aQBm7uEQ5P2d?id=43336
Power from solar cells using heat (it would be great if they could combine this with a conventional solar cell). http://renewableenergyaccess.com/rea/news/story;jsessionid=aQBm7uEQ5P2d?id=43498
Power from gravity http://biz.yahoo.com/iw/060213/0109733.html
A new way of making hydrogen from solar http://www.fuelcellsworks.com/Supppage4553.html
Underwater windmill http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/10/1009_031009_moonpower.html
Spray on solar cells http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/01/0114_050114_solarplastic.html
Another fun old "Free Power" Patent (in German) http://www.rexresearch.com/coler/de680761.pdf
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=9285
Excerpt from the link:
"In 2003, the biologist Jeffrey Dukes calculated that the fossil fuels we burn in one year were made from organic matter "containing 44 x 10 to the 18 grams of carbon, which is more than 400 times the net primary productivity of the planet's current biota."(1) In plain English, this means that every year we use four centuries' worth of plants and animals.
The idea that we can simply replace this fossil legacy - and the extraordinary power densities it gives us - with ambient energy is the stuff of science fiction. There is simply no substitute for cutting back. But substitutes are being sought everywhere. They are being promoted today at the climate talks in Montreal, by states - such as ours - which seek to avoid the hard decisions climate change demands. And at least one of them is worse than the fossil fuel burning it replaces.
The last time I drew attention to the hazards of making diesel fuel from vegetable oils, I received as much abuse as I have ever been sent by the supporters of the Iraq war. The biodiesel missionaries, I discovered, are as vociferous in their denial as the executives of Exxon. I am now prepared to admit that my previous column was wrong. But they're not going to like it. I was wrong because I underestimated the fuel's destructive impact."
Alternatives are not in place nor will they ever be in place to provide non-fossil fuels-based replication of energy services available from oil, natural gas and coal. It is powerdown or nothing, long term.
I don't much want to say this on TOD, so I don't. But since you have, I can only agree with you. I tend to focus on fossil fuels supply issues--which are crucial to the way we live now, in the near-term and also on climate change scenarios. About the best scenario I see is low-emissions use of fossil fuels (eg. coal gasification with carbon sequestration) as we powerdown to an entirely type of living arrangement on this planet. The sooner the better for these types of technologies. Interesting what Monbiot said about these Palm Oil plantations that are destroying terrestrial GHG sinks to make biodiesel fuels and releasing huge amounts of stored carbon into the atmosphere as the forests are burned (including storage in the underlying soil or peat). Wow, I mean, how fucked up is that?
So, nope, there is no free lunch and sometimes I wish people would quit pretending that there is one.
glibly optimistic tech fixes in a row get me hyperventilating.
Agric: Sorry, don't fret, I should have included the next paragraph from the Monbiot link:
"Before I go any further, I should make it clear that turning used chip fat into motor fuel is a good thing. The people slithering around all day in vats of filth are perfoming a service to society. But there is enough waste cooking oil in the UK to meet one 380th of our demand for road transport fuel(2). Beyond that, the trouble begins".
You missed storage batteries. They're nearly as old as gasification (the Planté cell was invented in 1859 so it's got a sesquicentennial coming up) and are improving even faster than gasification tech; the new nanoparticle Li-ion cathodes look like they're going to see some competition from... Planté's invention with carbon-foam electrode backings. These things exist now, going to market in products like power tools.
And then there's ultracapacitors. Right now they're the playthings of the low-rider and boomer-car set, but the prospect of storing megawatt-hours in a volume of a 2-car garage seems to be coming fast.
Wind and gasification are great, but we've got other things that aren't quite as mature but are going to be very important in the next ten years or even less.
Both century old, extremely well proven technologies. Latest advance (last ~25 years) is regenerative braking where braking feeds power back into the line for electric transportation.
My gut feeling (yet to be backed up by any really solid literature review) is that there is enough wind and solar resource out there to support a reasonably comfortable level of energy supply for everyone in the world if we change our ways a little. The biosphere could be sustainably harvested to provide carbon-based materials of manufacture (all the way from bamboo to carbon fibre and synthetic polymers).
Compressed air, batteries or electified rail could provide almost all of our transport needs.
I really think that these things are possible, or close to possible with current technology.
The main problems facing us now as a species are political and organisational (including economic), not technical. If the problems were primarily technical I would be much more optimistic than I am.
Don't we have 5 billion years to play with? LOL (Yes, I am very aware of the numerous fallacies, errors and stupidities in my statement, no need to respond).
But it should worry the 'biblicals' if they still think it was all created 4004 years ago.
It does kinda make one think: WTF we gonna do when nearly all the frozen sunshine (all kinds) is gone?
BTW, what are the hazards (apart from fuel tax evasion consequences) of brewing up diesel from waste oil and fat my local chip shop (you call them fries over there) would otherwise throw away?