Oil shortages, alternative energy and resource wars 13

[josephv]

Where is Engineering going in the next 5 years?

The single most important issue that will dominate engineering in the next couple of years is the unavoidable depletion of the world's oil supplies. Hopefully, engineers everywhere will rise to the challenge by helping with the development of alternative sources of energy.

Of course, engineers can help, but we also need to radically rethink our way of life. Unless, we change our wasteful ways, we risk decades of resource wars.

What do you think of this?

For more information visit:

http://www.hubbertpeak.com/

 

[gwolf]

Well, I claim a foot-fault on the Goodwin caller Rhodie because the Hitler comment was an aside to an individual and not used as a basis for argument.

(-)))

 

[gwolf]

OK, I give up, how do I get the hands and ears on the emoticons. I am willing to agree with that petrol-head Locock if someone tells me.

 

[BigWallyB]

No need to resign to Greg.

Emoticons/Smileys page.
Top of page has various other page choices.

If you are not a liberal when you are young, you have no heart. If you are not a conservative when you are old, you have no brain.........Winston Churchill.

Wally

 

[gwolf]

Aaaaaaaaaaaallllrightey, thanks Wally.

> If you are not a liberal when you are young, you have no heart. If you are not a conservative when you are old, you have no brain.........Winston Churchill.

One of my favourite quotes

 

[sms]

gwolf, yes I am completely serious. The supply and demand balance in the world is shifting toward Chinese demand, but the US is addicted to oil like it's cocaine. We will buy it at any price, and there will always be people willing to sell it to us, not matter how much they hate the US.

QCE: "And what happens when countries don't want to sell oil to the USA because they have been bullied by the USA's foireign policies????"

We'll either buy elsewhere and pay more, solve the engineering problem and make oil obsolete, or get serious about pumping our own oil. If you really think that the US would start invading middle eastern countries to steal their oil you are either naive, or have no concept of culture and politics in the USA. The people of the US would not let it happen. There will always be those willing to sell oil to the US. Too much money involved not to.

QCE: "Are you really suggesting that the USA plays fairly on the world stage as far as trade relations go."

I did not suggest that at all, business is business. What does fair have to do with business or international politics. Depending on how you define playing fair, I would suggest that China does not play fair, neither does Russia, or the European Union. In a way the Mexican government encourages their people to head north so they don't have to take care of them. Is that fair?

In fact countries all over the world have invited US oil companies in to explore fields and start production, only to nationalize those assets and kick the US firms out. Nothing fair about that, but it is business in the modern world.

-The future's so bright I gotta wear shades!

 

[GregLocock]

People who suggest invading other countries for resources have obviously never done the sums. Governments see only part of the eventual profit, yet have to finance all of the war.



Cheers

Greg Locock

Please see FAQ731-376 for tips on how to make the best use of Eng-Tips.

 

[owg]

I thought a few "facts" followed by a bit of opinion may benefit the discussion.
"Facts" - At current (end of 2004) consumption rates and based on proved reserves, the world has 66 years of gas, 40 years of oil, and 164 years of coal. Source is BP annual survey which matches US DOE EIA fairly well.

"Opinion" - Growth in world oil consumption is not exponential. from 1990 with projection to 2015 it is linear with an annual growth rate of about 1.3 MMBPD. Source is EIA.
The current high prices ($60-$70/bbl) are likely caused by production limits not reserve limits. It will probably take 1-2 years for production to catch up. I think the production facilities got behind due to surprising demand from China and India while areas with large reserves got behind in production capacity due to political problems. The prime examples are Iraq and the former USSR.

HAZOP at

http://www.curryhydrocarbons.ca

 

[DrillerNic]

As teh onlky person who describes themselve as a Petroleum Engineer to post on this board, can I point out a few facts that are often ignored when discussing published reserves?

The 1100 billion barrels of reserves quoted in the EIA website and in the BP Statisitcal Energy Review are PROVED reserves, ie those reserves which current engineering and geological understanding indicates can be recovered under existing economic and operating conditions.

So there is an explicit influence of the price of oil- if the oil price goes up, the amount of proved reserves also goes up, without any exploration effort at all! Proved reserves have increased year on year every year apart from a couple of wobbles in 1990 after the price crash at the end of the '80s and again in 1997 when the oil price dropped to $10/bbl (god 1997 was awful!)

Then there are the other types of reserves: Probable and Possible....the USGS suggests there is at least another half a billion barrels to be discovered (ie the average of the sum of the probable and possible around the world). Then you add in the non conventional oil sources: heavy oil, tar sands, oil shales, marine gas hydrates, coal bed methane etc.

There have been large discoveries regularly (large is generally accepted as over a billion barrels): Girassol, Shakhalin, AGT, Chriag, even a mature province like the North Sea threw up Buzzard a couple of years ago, and Chevron are rumoured to have found something very big West of Shetland. Ture, there haven't been many discoveries like Ghawar in Saudi Arabia, or Cantarell in Mexico, but these super giant fields are the exception rather than the rule- there's only a handful of them anyway!

Finally the Hubbert Peak only works once you've gone past the peak- it can't predict where the peak will be....and it only works within a closed system; change the sytem and the peak changes: how come oil prodution from the US lower 48 is increasing compared to a decade ago, when the Hubbert's peak for lower 48 production shows that it peaked in the 70's and should be on a steady, unstoppable decline? Answer: there's a new province, the deep and ultra deep Gulf of Mexico.

Hydrocarbons will be important as a source of energy at least until I retire, and proabaly at least until my children retire too.

 

[gwolf]

"Facts" - At current (end of 2004) consumption rates and based on proved reserves, the world has 66 years of gas, 40 years of oil, and 164 years of coal. Source is BP annual survey which matches US DOE EIA fairly well.

Then we had better start changing ****ing quickly because those time scales are a blink of an eye in human civilization terms, non-existent in geological terms.

 

[QCE]

Facts - smacks - We won't likely run out anytime soon. However that doesn't mean we should not reduce our consumption. If we run out in 40 years then there ain't much we can do now. We might as well run out next week. It would be kinda neat to see what would happen if we really did run out.

 

[BigWallyB]

Hey, just one final thot b4 this thread is history in my book.

"Next best alternative" is something we all have to deal with. Total cost, cost effectiveness, ROI and such are a fact of life whether we are dealing with individuals or companies, sex, alternative energy or wars. Mr. Locock and others have oft said that the IC engine is ~20-40% efficient, yet we go on using it. Power plants are in that range also I believe. Why do we go on using them? What is the next best alternative? Right now there are none.

Those in the world that espouse the dire need for replacement energy sources no doubt still drive IC engined cars, have AC and petrol-fueled home and work climate controls along with all of the other petrol-based accoutrements of modern-day living (everything from socks to hair gel.) It is a rare enviro-...character that puts his money where his mouth and then only to some small extent. Greenpeace even interferes with petrol-powered boats.

Govt. will always warp the free market as it warps everything it touches. That is not always a bad thing. Govt. can quickly change things for the better if the will of the people is behind it. Unfortunately, people can rarely see past their own avarice. Predictions of coming crisis IMO have always always been motivated by something other than benevolence



Life is what happens while we're making other plans.

Wally

 

[GregLocock]

Hang on, there's a huge practical difference between 20% efficient, which would be a typical car engine, and 37%-40% which is achievable with today's technology. If you could waave a magic wand and halve the fuel consumption of every relatively inefficient engine in the world do you think that would have an effect on oil prices? The fact that it is not being done just shows that fuel consumption is not taken seriously by an economically significant number of customers, or, in plain english, the price of fuel has yet to rise enough for the wastage of fuel to matter.

If we also could persuade the average soccer mum to delete 4wd from her bus, and use a modicum of technology in the structure, and use sensible road tires not off-road ones, we could probably get another 10% off her fuel bill, and increase her safety and that of other users.









Cheers

Greg Locock

Please see FAQ731-376 for tips on how to make the best use of Eng-Tips.

 

[sms]

Nicely said Greg! (As usual). Oh and DrillerNC, while I am not a petroleum engineer, I am a mechanical engineer who works for one of those extremely large global "energy" companies on problems of production. I thought I would let you know so you wouldn't feel lonely....

-The future's so bright I gotta wear shades!

 

[DrillerNic]

One comment on the Oil Resource wars...the US didn't invade Iraq for Iraq's oil. That's not to say that the fact that Iraq has lots of oil wasn't a consideration....if Iraq didn't have oil, no-one in the USA would care (how many people in the US care about Zimbabwae? or Congo? or Burma?), if all the USA wanted was Iraq's oil, there were much easier and cheaper ways to get it: all they had to do was get the UN Security Council's sanctions lifted, and sign the license agreements with the Iraqi National Oil Company. Same right now with Iran- if the Burton Helms act was repealed, Chevron, Exxon, Conoco etc would be joining Shell, Total etc tomorrow in Iran (and they'd probably be welcomed by the Iranian Government, after a bit of posturing for PR purposes).

There were a few swivel eyed Neo Republicans who dreamt of invading Iraq and privatising the Iraqi oil industry as a way to break OPEC, but no US oil man is ever going to want to destroy OPEC- the only reason there's a long term US oil industry at all is because OPEC keeps the oil price artificailly high (although right now OPEC isn't needed to maintain oil prices, but soon, say 2007, it will be). The ex-Shell USA guy who was put in charge of the Iraqi Oil Industry by Bremmer blocked every move towards privatisation that was tried by the CPA because of this.

The easiest way to get oil is to buy it; the US buys it quite happily from people it despises (Venuzuala) or that despise it (Saudi Arabia) or places that are run by meglomaniac madmen (Turkmenistan).

 

[sms]

So Hugo Chavez is convinced that the U.S. is about to invade Venezula. Is he just plain crazy, or is he playing a political game of some sort? I suspect that he is trying to solidfy his political base by developing a sense of patriotism and pride in standing up to a US threat that is non existant....

-The future's so bright I gotta wear shades!

 

[DrillerNic]

Huga Chavez is probably correct in thinking that the US wants to get rid of him & will do things that are pretty wrong to do it (the US did sponsor an abortive coup against him a few years ago, remember?).

Chavez is a very good populatist politician, gaining massive support from the poor of Venuzuala by talking of Bolivariran revolution, taking on the establishment (PDVSA, the middle classes etc), using emotive language about foreign oil companies owing back taxes and so on. For Chavez, using the threat of gringo invasion and interference in Venuzuala's affairs is very useful politically (even his opponents in the middle classes would probably unite with him to oppose direct US interference in their country).

 

[jmw]

Let's not forget the mess he is making of their oil industry.

JMW

http://www.ViscoAnalyser.com

 

[moltenmetal]

We'll never run out of fossil fuels. We'll simply go to less and less carbon-efficient fossil fuels as we deplete the efficient ones. The question is not whether we'll run out, but whether or not the planet can survive the impact of this wanton consumption of high environmental-cost fuels.

Saudi light sweet crude rises to the surface under its own pressure. It's easy to recover and to make gasoline from- by "easy" you should read "requires a smaller fraction of the product be burned to make the energy necessary to get these things done". This means fewer tons of carbon dioxide per megawatt-hour of energ delivered to the end user, whether that be a powerplant or a fleet of SUVs.

Fuels like light sweet crude, land-based sweet natural gas etc- these are carbon efficient fuels, but they're also finite and are being depleted rapidly by growing consumption.

Tarsands, oil shale, stranded gas liquefaction, methane hydrates and coal- these are less carbon-efficient fuel sources. More of the product has to be burned to recover the product, hence more moles of carbon dioxide per megawatt-hour of energy derived. There's enough tarsands in Canada alone to fuel the US for 100+ years at predicted rates of consumption increase, and enough coal probably for 300+ years after that. Again, the question is not whether we have enough, but DARE we waste these resources dragging two tonnes of metal around with us everywhere we go?

Waste to fuels projects are merely a distraction, not a solution. Beneficial relative to "wasting" these secondary resources, but a mere drop in the bucket in comparison to fossil fuels consumption. "Thermal depolymerization" is merely pyrolysis wearing a Salvation Army dress and high heels. Many of pyrolysis's problems have been swept under the rug in that Discover magazine article, like referring to PAH-laden "char" as "solid carbon". One thing is certain: you get more energy for less cost out of burning these wastes directly to satisfy stationary energy requirements than you do by converting them to liquid transporation fuels and THEN burning them!

Many of the so-called "alternative energy" sources are distractions also. Hydrogen falls into this category, as does biodiesel, grain or sugarcane ethanol etc.

The only thing which will drive efficiency and alternatives is increased cost of fuels due to a combination of natural market forces AND taxation. Unfortunately, the political will to do this is lacking. We'll all be choking on our own filth long before the politicians get their act together and do what's necesary. But that won't stop me from lobbying for it.

We technical people need to be honest with the politicians: there is no "technological fix" here- no magic potion or technology which will allow us to continue to squander energy in the wanton way that we North Americans do without growing costs- both economic and "intangible" like the affect on the climate and the effect of smog on health etc. Not hydrogen, not fusion, not wind or solar or the freakin' zero point energy of vacuum space. But there ARE engineers and technologies to actually SOLVE the problem of energy waste, if we put the money into using them!