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DrumBeat: July 15, 2006
Posted by threadbot on July 15, 2006 - 9:22am
Topic: Miscellaneous
A Plan to End U.S. Oil Imports?
WASHINGTON — American imports of oil could be eliminated by 2030, a new study by an interstate consortium asserts, if the nation turns to an aggressive program of energy efficiency and commercialization of four already-demonstrated technologies for making transportation fuels.The study, sponsored by a nonprofit group of legislators and governors called the Southern States Energy Board, urges a crash program to meet fuel needs without imports, a strategy it says will lead to an American “industrial rebirth.” It says that such a strategy could create more than one million new jobs, reduce the trade deficit by more than $600 billion, and end oil price shocks that hurt the economy.
Bodman: Traders controlling oil price
CALGARY (CP) — The world's oil suppliers have lost control of the markets, ceding that power to traders and giving rise to greater volatility in crude prices, U.S. Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman said Friday...."This is the first time in my professional lifetime that the suppliers of oil in the world have really lost control of the markets," Bodman said during a two-day trip to Western Canada where he toured the rapidly developing oilsands region in northern Alberta.
"They are unable to turn the spigot and increase supplies, and therefore are unable to control oil prices."
What's pushing oil prices higher? The Iraq War is one reason, but there are at least seven others.
E10 gas prices inch past regular. While usually a few cents cheaper, the ethanol blend is now more expensive.
[Update by Leanan on 07/15/06 at 10:07 AM EDT]
Where Does Israel Get Oil? If you're selling, they're buying.
Bangladesh to seek foreign bids for oil and gas exploration
Update [2006-7-15 13:20:14 by Prof. Goose]: Oil Price Super Spike In Progress Amid Mideast Violence
More of a prescription for global warming than energy independence.
Coal will save us:
"The one with the biggest potential -- estimated to displace 29 percent of imported oil -- is making liquid fuels from coal, using the Fischer-Tropsch method."
We can pump more out of the North Slope and West TX than exists:
"A second is to take the carbon dioxide created in both that process and other processes and pump it into old oil fields to push more oil to the surface, a technique called enhanced oil recovery."
Same as #1:
"A third is to use biomass, including wood and crop wastes, as feedstock for factories that make a fuel gas consisting of carbon monoxide and hydrogen. That so-called synthesis gas is the same as that made from coal in the Fischer-Tropsch method and it can then be turned into a liquid."
"The fourth is production of oil from shale, a technique tried after the oil shock of 1979, but abandoned when prices fell."
Little about:
Conservation
Light Rail
Peak Oil
Higher CAFE standards
Global Warming
Etc.
http://www.adn.com/money/industries/oil/story/7964034p-7857193c.html
North Slope oil output took triple hit in June
FACTORS: Lisburne issues, warmth, overall declines in old fields hurt monthly tally.
By KRISTEN NELSON
Petroleum News
Published: July 14, 2006
Last Modified: July 14, 2006 at 02:25 AM
Excerpt:
A triple-whammy of seasonally warmer weather, which reduces compressor efficiency, continued pipeline shutdowns at the Lisburne field and declining output from older fields resulted in a drop in North Slope oil production in June.
The June average was 792,592 barrels per day, 3.6 percent lower than in May and 8 percent lower than in June 2005, according to the state Department of Revenue.
First Half of 2006 Is Warmest on Record
And it sure feels like it, this weekend... :-P
Second, it ignores the massive water use, earthen byproducts pollution, etc. of the F-T process.
Third, when an article like this starts talking about oil shale as a realistic part of the solution, you know it has no anchorage in reality.
Batten the Hatches and load up on popcorn, beer and homegrown (reduce your dependency on others ;)
Iran is busy ushering in Allah's Apocalypse Now via it's puppies of war in Lebanon and Gaza... last night the Iranian pResident Flake said His Dad could beat up Israel's Dad and then he Double Dared Isreal to attack Syria... and the Iranians have some people on the ground in Lebanon so they could claim injury and join the fray at any time.
======Israel charged that Iran, the main sponsor of Hezbollah militants, has 100 troops in Lebanon providing Hezbollah key support -- including helping fire a missile Friday that badly damaged an Israeli warship. Hezbollah denied it.
President Bush, on a trip to Russia, said it was up to Hezbollah "to lay down its arms and to stop attacking." Arab foreign ministers gathered in Cairo but fell into squabbling after moderate states, led by Saudi Arabia, denounced Hezbollah for starting the fight....
France decided to send a ferry from Cyprus to evacuate thousands of its citizens from Lebanon -- the first nation to do so. The move signaled the West expects a drawn-out battle....
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060715/ap_o...
zi87Q5V1rNUY6xvaA8F;_ylu=X3oDMTA2Z2szazkxBHNlYwN0bQ--
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/HG11Ak01.html
"Gavrilo Princeps, the Serbian gunman who shot Archduke Franz Ferdinand dead in June 1914, was a puppy. So are the Hamas ..."
I wonder if Iran and Syria expected this severe of a response. And I love how most moderate arab states blamed the "Recklessness" of Hezbollah and Hamas (and their Syrian and Iranian Masters).
I wonder if the Pakistani Moozlims are going to get India and Pakistan to pick up where they left off in 2003... maybe Islam loses the radicals from it's gene pool soon?
The analogy is with the start of WWI - "puppy commits terrorist act on behalf of Master which escalates and precipitates world war" - except this time it is hezbollah and hamas playing the role of the puppies.
The Iranians and Syrians are the Masters holding the other end of the leash... and I wonder if the current consequences were expected by them or if they are a bit surprised at how quickly things have escalated since the abduction of the few soldiers.
And interestingly, the moozlim Puppies in Pakistan have started festivities in India - maybe in the hopes of souring relations between these two nuclear powers who only a few years ago almost came to blows... I wonder if this is coincidence or a part of Iran's defense
Iran did warned of their hidden army all over the world and these eruptions are happening now when they need distractions to buy time with the UN on the "Nuclear Isthue".
And in both lebenon and pakistan - predominately moozlim countries - the Iranians are weakening governments they do not control via their proxy puppies.
===pakistan/indiaIndia: Pakistan Must Rein in Terrorists
BOMBAY, India - The bombers who targeted Bombay's rail system had support from inside Pakistan, India's prime minister said Friday, warning that the nuclear-armed rivals' peace process could be derailed unless Islamabad reins in terrorists...
Indian officials, though, have blamed it for many major attacks, including March bombings in the Hindu holy city of Varanasi that killed 20 people and a bombing that killed more than 60 in New Delhi in October.
An Indian Home Ministry official also said investigators were pursuing leads that the outlawed Students Islamic Movement of India could have been involved in the Bombay attacks, possibly with the aid of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency...
Investigators were casting a wide net for the assailants -- focusing on a Pakistan-based Islamic militant network, Lashkar-e-Tayyaba, along with smaller homegrown groups...
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060714/ap_o...
9AVF3UN30OYBxg8F;_ylu=X3oDMTBjMHVqMTQ4BHNlYwN5bnN1YmNh dA--
Speculation now is that the fighting, especially against Hezbollah by Israel will last some weeks (2-3?).
I found it of interest that no land troops have entered Lebanon. All this is from the air, artillery based in Israel, or warships.
By the way, will CNN start calling it the Israeli Navy and sailors, not soldiers!
About the lack of land troops, I've read several times they are still activating reservists and maybe this is still the "softening up" phase... I guess we'll find out this week.
About CNN, I saw a short clip of theirs attempting to explain the conflict in the Middle East - it reminded me of why I quit watching television as well as why no one in my 3D world is the least bit aware of Peak Oil.
Yes, Israel was mobilizing some troops but this is not a full mobilization.
The Israeli goal is to have the Hezbollah Shiite population in southern Lebanon either moved from their mutual border or de-fanged by the Lebanese army, but I do not think this strategy will succeed.
- Lebanon in general and her army are too weak.
- Bringing further misery to so many is not a winning strategy.
I do not think the new leadership in Israel thought this out far enough. As my Grandpa used to say, "either get on the pot or off the pot." Either smash Syria and gut Iran, or do very little.There was a war in the 1700's obstentiably fought over a sailor's cut off ear. It was called the "War of Jenkin's ear." I wonder if this thing will grow much larger over the coming days/weeks because of the three Israeli POW's. . . .
One of a series of wars caused by colonial rivalries in the new world. The Spanish excluded English traders from their American colonies, leading to smuggling and resentment. In 1738, Captain Robert Jenkins appeared before Parliament with his ear, which he claimed had been cut off by the Spanish when they boarded his ship seven years earlier. War was declared in 1739, although the conflict was soon swallowed by the War of the Austrian Succession (1740-1748) and by 1743 the hostilies in America became part of King George's War (1744-1748). There were English attacks on Spanish colonies in the Caribbean in 1739 and 1740, and attacks of St. Augustune (Florida), then in Spanish hands, in 1740 and 1743, while the Spanish launched an attack on Georgia in 1743.
Just saw this over at the BBC (THE great right-wing site),
"As to where this is going: at the moment, Israel does not seem to be thinking about an exit strategy. I think Israel's calculation is that this is a sufficiently large crisis to prompt the international community to step in and get tough with Syria for its support of Hezbollah and to make the Lebanese Government accountable for actions that take place within its borders.
"I think we can expect a day or two more of the Israeli bombardment of Hezbollah targets inside Lebanon. The Israeli military justified today's bombing of Beirut airport because they said it was used freely to channel arms from Iran to Hezbollah. Despite pressure from hawkish elements in the Israeli military establishment, there is no plan at present to take military action against Syria."
I find the different takes on the situation in the media to be interesting... some seem so naive, some slanted towards someone's axe that needs grinding maybe, some see through the smoke screens.
I think Israel knows exactly what it is doing and it's the Syrians and Iranians who are surprised at how quickly the wolverine came outta his den when they poked it with a stick - and are now wondering which pawn to move next and when.
I think Israel is focused on the Iranians and Syrians while batting away the puppies. I think they are about as worried about the paper mache "government" in Lebanon as the Iranians and Syrians.
I have a feeling the Syrians and Iranians will make sure things escalate so they can use whatever "goodies" they got from North Korea and/or from Saddam's remaining stash of WMDs (the big surprises they promise ???).
I think the Witches of Persia know Peak Oil is upon us and so believe TimezUp. Those headf*cked freaks are on a Divine Mission for Allah.
My In-depth Interview with Tad Patzek
He also echoes my position on Brazil in the interview, as well as the position I have taken on ethanol stocks:
Cheers,
RR
The Big Oil Companies Have Been Ripping Californians Off -- And Not Just at the Pump
I offered to debate him right here at TOD, or at The Huffington Post. I am so sick and tired of his irresponsible claims, that it is time to put them to rest. People are failing to prepare for Peak Oil because people like him are assuring them that we are going to transition right to ethanol when we need to.
Cheers,
RR
If one does the macro analysis on ethanol, it is fairly clear, that ethanol cannot be anything but a small part of the transportation fuel picture, as long as we do not reduce the population load on this planet by a very substantial amount - feat I would consider highly unfeasible by any "civilized" means.
Of course you get less energy from electricity than was originally embedded in the coal that generated it. In any energy conversion there is always a loss, the laws of thermodynamics demand it. There is always heat and friction loss. But coal is basically found energy. That is people did not spend other energy generating coal. If you lose 50% of the energy embedded in coal in the process of generating electricity, that's still 50% more than you had to begin with, before you found the coal.(Minus the energy it took to mine the coal of course.) But the point is, you have a net gain because the energy embedded in the coal, the found energy, is far more than the cost of the coal. You can afford to lose most of it and still come out well ahead of the game.
But in the generation of ethanol, it's a different story. You are using fossil energy to generate a replacement for fossil energy, and getting less replacement energy than was contained in the original fossil energy.
During my career in electronics, I have come across far more than one budding genius that figured out how to get free energy. They would use a motor to turn a generator to generate electricity. Then once they got the motor up to speed, they would switch the input to the motor to electricity out of the generator, and would simply tap off the excess electricity from the generator, completely free. Of course these geniuses failed to realize that it takes more energy to turn the generator than you could ever get out of the generator.
Yet that is exactly what the ethanol geniuses are trying to do. As long as it takes more energy to generate the energy contained in ethanol, then it will always be a losing proposition.
Now even if ethanol has an EROEI of 1, producing it makes sense since it effectively turns the energy embodied mostly in coal (plus some oil and NG) into a more useful (liquid) form.
The true issue with ethanol is limited scalability because of the amounts of resources invested per unit of output, where it would definately be outcompeted by CTL. But I realise that this aspect is too complex to be raised into a public debate.
For now ethanol from corn is propped up because of its "clean" image (which is barely a truth), but when the situation gets tighter the more technically feasible processes will take their place.
At any rate even if they use electricity, they must pay for it. And if the electricity, plus the oil plus the gas plus the cost of plant and maintenance plus the cost of the farm equipment, cost more than the profit from the ethanol, it just ain't gonna happen. The farmers would never take a loss on their crop and ADM most definitely would not. So it is up to the federal government to keep pumping out the corn subsidies, else the grand ethanol adventure goes down the drain.
So you see Mr. Khosla does not have a point.
This is the crucial point, of course - if it is true than we have to rule ethanol out completely. It would take me a lot to study the matter, but my guess would be that ethanol from corn is slightly positive. The logic is that the price of ethanol per BTU currently is about the same as the price of gasoline. Yes, there is 60c/gallon govt subsidy, but these 60c would then need to cover all other expenses of farmers and destillers - amortizations, labor, materials and of course profits. Highly unlikely, IMO.
I would guess is that the truth is somewhere in between - ethanol is slightly positive energetically, plus receiving some subsidy by cheaper coal (oil and NG are ~ same price/BTU), but is not such a great source for energy.
The most correct thing to do IMO would be to remove the ethanol subsidy and see how it fares in the real-world. My guess is that it will stay but it will become obvious how marginal solution it is.
Also, all the recipes for soft drinks and various packaged foods are going to have to be changed. Currently, it leads to the situation, that HFCS is subsidized, while sugar is taxed - so it is cheaper for packaged foods to use HFCS.
So I do not expect corn subsidies to disappear. I think the industry is looking for additional subsidies for the corn used in ethanol.
I find it quite discouraging how on many questions like this one ordinary people are just left helpless at the face of how the government-corporate oligarchy is doing what it wants to. It doesn't sound very good for our long-term future.
I think it's more that domestic corn (and syrup) are subsidized, while cheap imported sugar has high tariffs. There's a big sugarcane industry in Florida which benefits from the tariffs, while candy manufacturers are leaving the US because of them.
Maybe. But notwithstanding peak oil, it still generally makes sense to get gas the old fashioned way, from oil. There are still alternatives to corn based ethanol which make more sense from a cost standpoint and an energy standpoint. For most uses, there really isn't an alternative to electricity, so I still don't think Khosla has much of a point.
But still ...... It does get complicated.
We can only guess, I suppose, what time will tell. Meanwhile, my local car dealership in my little town of 10,000 pumps out Toyotas and Chryslers and giant Dodge trucks like there is no tomorrow.
Four years from approval to opening is a reasonable but quick timeframe.
http://www.canada.com/ottawa/news/city/story.html?id=988a85e2-91ff-4589-a37e-b02f77e3a4a0&k=5532 2
Meanwhile Seattle decided to run Light Rail accross Lake Washington on the I-90 corridor bridge instead of BRT, but it is a minimum of 15 years away (one wonders about price & availability of oil in 2021).
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/277571_transit14.html
An editorial on this had two comments I will excerpt.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/opinion/2003125768_lance14.html
hese options have a 15-year horizon and feel a long ways away, but they are downright prescient in anticipation of the population and employment growth forecast 25 years out.
The public craves alternatives to $3-a-gallon gasoline. Look at the jump in ridership on the Sounder commuter-rail service between Seattle and Tacoma. Four daily trains carried 334,183 passengers in the first quarter of 2006, compared with 228,302 in the same period of 2005.
People will ride mass transit if it is available and reliable. And they will ride it as the daily automobile commute becomes all the more hideous and unpredictable. Time is money on the job and with day-care centers, where fees go platinum after 6 p.m.
In response to surging demand, Sound Transit will add two more Sounder runs next year, and, in a nod to the true ebb and flow of people's working lives, one will be a reverse commute to Tacoma in the morning.
...
Recent national surveys found a kind of apathy creep into the early 30s. Old political-science truisms about an early, transitory disconnect with voting and civic involvement is lasting longer. The antidote was thought to be the tendrils of employment ties, marriage and buying a house. An accumulation of physical and emotional stuff takes root and creates a sense of place. Nothing like a hefty mortgage to focus the mind.
As real-estate prices grow ever wackier and make homeownership all the more improbable for many, I think transit-oriented development is the key to helping more people get a stake in their community and a share of the American dream.
Housing of modest square-footage clustered near shops and transportation is the ticket for young homebuyers to have a place of their own, build equity and, sure, register to vote and complain about City Hall and the school board.
Compact transit villages will be built farther out, with narrower streets, walkable shopping areas and strong transportation links to urban centers.
Transit-oriented development is the Levittown of the 21st century. William Levitt housed postwar America in 850-square-foot, mass-produced, single-family homes. Today's route to a home of one's own can begin near transit centers in Federal Way or Renton. It's a good thing.
Sound Transit is the medium for getting something done. Eastside communities recognize what they need, and they will dog Sound Transit to make it happen. Light rail and the American way. That's super, man.
And Tampa, home of a short tourist streetcar line and disinterested in anything else, is realising that "OOPS, we need a viable mass transit system". Corporate relocations ask about one. And gas prices are unstable. So local business conservatives are changing their tune. An article aboout one developer.
http://www.tbo.com/news/money/MGB683OEKPE.html
One of Florida's most influential land developers with deep political ties to state and national Republican Party campaign financing said Wednesday he strongly endorses the need for rail and other alternatives to ease the Tampa Bay area's highway traffic crunch.
In a rare public stance on a local political issue, West Shore developer Al Austin said in an interview that Tampa Bay and its elected officials must face up to prospects that its economic future and quality of life could end up in gridlock.
"As recently as a year ago I would not have said this, but I have come to realize we need rail and other modes of transportation," Austin said.
=====Now, if we are lucky enough to have a 2010 Peak and 2% declines thereafter, the political process may be able to build enough Urban Rail to ease the transisition.
Alan
If there has been zero planning before, even for rejected proposals, it is hard to do anything at all. Panic &