Articles tagged with "original"

Update on Coal

This a guest post by Jean Laherrère, retired geologist from TOTAL and key founding member of ASPO; in recent years he has been a prolific contributor to this website. In this post Jean updates his model of future world Coal extraction and puts it in perspective within his fossil fuel model.

In 2007 the world coal production was modeled with an ultimate of 600 Gtoe and the peak was forecast at 4.2 Gtoe around 2050.

Figure 1: World coal production and model for an ultimate of 600 Gtoe in 2007

Comments on BP Statistical Review 2012

This is a guest post by Jean Laherrère a long time contributor to TheOilDrum.

Digest

  • The BP Statistical Review has the merit to release every year free and convenient updated historical data on energy.
  • This data is recopied from what is reported by national agencies, avoiding diplomatic conflicts.
  • Despite the heterogeneity of the data, the report displays a ridiculously high number of digits, in contradiction with the real accuracy of the sources.
  • The report wrongly adds unconventional to conventional reserves.
  • BP ignores backdating, using obsolete reporting rules that lead to artificial reserve growth.
  • Most economists believe this reserve growth to be the real, when in fact known Oil and Gas reserves peaked in 1980.

Tactics and Strategy at the Strait of Hormuz

Afonso de Albuquerque arrived at the Indian Ocean in 1506, commanding a squadron of five war vessels integrated in Tristão da Cunha's Armada. In the summer of 1507, after the conquest of Socotra, the Armada's main objective, Afonso de Albuquerque departed on his own, commanding a fleet of six vessels and 500 marines to take the easternmost island at the entrance of the Persian Gulf, called by local folk Hormuz. Defeating a garrison of 15 000 men with his artillery, Albuquerque took Hormuz and commissioned the construction of a fortress. This island would eventually lend its name to one of the most important choke-points of the Indian Ocean, at the time the principal commercial pathway of commodities from Asia to Europe. Afonso de Albuquerque had brought with him from Lisbon a sealed letter appointing him as Vice-King to the East Indies, replacing Francisco de Almeida, whose strict naval prowess policy didn't impress the territory-hungry King. A period of indecision ensued, with most naval officers in the region initially refusing Albuquerque's rule and Hormuz was lost. In 1515, in his final days as Vice-King, Afonso de Albuquerque stormed Hormuz once again, taking it for good without military resistance. The fortress that stands to this day was finally completed, sealing the command over the commerce in the region. Beyond fortresses, the Portuguese left another lasting mark of their presence in Persia, which is the name of the currency, the rial.

After the Portuguese came the Persians, and then the English. The importance of the fortress waned, but that of the Strait of Hormuz itself, if anything, has only increased. Commodities flow in the opposite way these days, but unlike the luxury and exoticism of the past, today these are vital inputs to the world economy.

The Hydrogen Dream

Last week I went to Longwy's university campus, the Institut Universitaire de Technologie (part of the University of Lorraine), for a conference on renewable energies and energy efficiency. It was an event integrated in an InterReg project for innovation, called Tigre, gathering institutions from Lorraine, Saarland, Luxembourg, and Wallonie. It kicked off with a session on tri-generation, and went on with parallel sessions on waste biomass, and on hydrogen and fuel cells. I opted for the latter, feeling really curious about the present state of research on this field.

Cesare Marchetti proposed hydrogen (H2) as a large-scale energy vector almost fifty years ago. The main concern then was to find a simple way to feed transport systems with what seemed to be a fountain of energy about to come from the expanding nuclear park. The nuclear dream is largely gone, but hydrogen lives on. Is this dream about to come true as a piece in the transition puzzle to a post-fossil fuel world? That's what I was expecting to find out.

Energy Storage - Flywheel

This piece resulted from a challenge within the staff to write a collaborative post on emerging energy storage technologies. I left Chemistry back in high school but one technology that has long fascinated me led me to volunteer on a project: the flywheel. It seemed a good justification to study why industry hasn't developed many applications for these ancient mechanisms. The elusive quest for an answer to that question lead to a rather long writing, that justifies a post on its own. Hopefully this shall be the first of a series on energy storage.

Flywheels are very simple mechanisms. If you have a bicycle you can see how it works: lift one of its wheels from the ground and give it an impulse so that it starts spinning. If the wheel hub is in proper condition the wheel keeps on spinning for quite some time. In fact, were your bicycle in space and the wheel could spin for ever, all due to the law of energy conservation - the work employed by your hand on the wheel is stored as kinetic energy as the wheel spins. Here on Earth, the bicycle flywheel slowly grinds to a halt because air friction and hub imperfections slowly dissipate this energy.

One Year of Solar Power

Mid 2009. Depression. Ground flat interest rates. Oppressing unemployment. What better time than now to invest on tangible assets? That was the mindset that led me to consider investing in Solar Photo-Voltaics (PV). I started studying the subject in order to become a micro-producer, taking advantage of newly passed legislation. Coincidence or not, a family member had recently returned from a working commission in Angola to set up a company that sells and installs solar micro-generation systems. I embarked on a interesting adventure that has had relevant developments.

Parts of this post were written in 2009 when I first attempted to apply for a special feed-in tariff. This experience has been logged at the European Tribune (part I, part II) where the original text contains several mistakes that have been corrected.


Weekly data for the first year of production. Click for full version.

Libya and World Oil Exports

This is a repost of an article that ran on The Oil Drum: Europe about two years ago. Today's events warrant another look at Libya's role in world oil production, past and future.




Libya is a relatively new country, having declared independence in 1951. For the last 39 years, the country has been ruled by a single man, Colonel Muammar al-Gaddafi. Over the years, the identity of this leader and his exquisite sense of style have mingled with the identity of the country itself.

Libya joined OPEC right after its creation, and played a pivotal role in the 1973 oil crisis. For the next three decades, Libya endured tense (and sometimes belligerent) relations with western countries. In recent years, as international oil prices have been rising, Libya has been able to re-institute itself as a reliable partner to the West, taking full advantage of the wealth promised by its still considerable oil resources.

OPEC quotas and crude oil production

This is a guest post by Jean Laherrère, a long-time friend of and contributor to TheOilDrum.

It is hard to obtain reliable graphs and quotas on OPEC oil production and to know how these quotas are ascertained. The few graphs that I found are incomplete and inaccurate. OPEC's website reports the oil production allocations (quotas or ceilings) from April 82 to Nov 2007. OPEC's 2009 annual report extends the data up to December 2009 but only with the total (24.845 Mb/d); there's no detail since January 2009. Energy Intelligence provided this missing breakdown by country as targeted since 2009. Quotas are agreed upon by each member during OPEC's meetings, but the detail of the compromise is not given, only the results.

Thus I decided to plot OPEC's quotas, comparing them with production. The outcome is interesting.

Lucky Economists, Unlucky Scientists?

For decades, economists (Cornucopians or optimists) have been at odds with natural scientists (Malthusians or pessimists) when it comes to the scarcity of natural resources. The economist’s argument, summarized here by Julian Simon, is as follows:

More people, and increased income, cause resources to become more scarce in the short run. Heightened scarcity causes prices to rise. The higher prices present opportunity, and prompt inventors and entrepreneurs to search for solutions. Many fail in the search, at cost to themselves. But in a free society, solutions are eventually found. And in the long run the new developments leave us better off than if the problems had not arisen. That is, prices eventually become lower than before the increased scarcity occurred. (Simon 1996)

The viewpoint of natural scientists seems to be a bit simpler; the more scarce something is the higher the price, leading to increasing prices as resources deplete over time. These opposing views have led to some famous wagers in the past. The most famous occurred in 1980 between economist Julian Simon and natural scientist Paul Ehrlich. The wager was whether the price of five metals would increase in ten years time. Simon won the bet. Another bet was made more recently. In 2005, John Tierney of the New York Times wagered with Matt Simmons over the price of oil. Simmons bet $5,000 that the price of oil would be $200 per barrel in 2010. Tierney won the bet.

As a result, Tierney has publicly applauded himself and the economists’ view in a recent article in the New York Times. He states: “Maybe something unexpected will change these happy trends, but for now I’d say that Julian Simon’s advice remains as good as ever. You can always make news with doomsday predictions, but you can usually make money betting against them.”

But what is the real message (if any) to be gleaned from these bets? Is it that economists are always right and natural scientists always wrong? Is it that prices decline for commodities over time?

I argue that there is very little (if anything) to be learned from these bets, and I explain why below the fold.

Peak Coal: the Olduvai perspective

Peak Coal. Some folks have begun eagerly researching this topic and writing about its timing, now that talk of Peak Oil is all around. The different outlooks on how and when the peak will occur are disparate, ranging from next year to a time many decades in the future. This post tries to view this debate in a different, wider perspective, and deals with the following issues:

  • Applying the Hubbert Method to Coal;
  • Looking at Ultimate Reserves for Coal;
  • Coal and its place in the Olduvai picture;
  • Implications for stakeholders;

This post is largely a follow up to Dave Summers' Future Coal Supplies: More, Not Less!