The Energy Thread

panic about growth rates in the third world strikes me as being driven by a particularly nasty strain of selfish hypocrisy, with a side-order of quasi-racist oxygen-fear

^^^OTFM> arguments about the "threat" of overpopulation drive me up the wall. the real issue is resource management, not the number of people.

also - people have been trying to stop mountaintop removal mining for years

it's hardly a new thing. back in the late 19th century in CA, mining companies would literally just blast entire mountains away with water cannons and then sift through the rubble for the shit they wanted, letting everything else just wash away. quality resource mgmt there guys...

...and then there was the 19th century proposal to burn down lots and lots of forest in patterns to bring more rain to the Midwest. Sheesh.

I'm hiring again. I need a process engineer, manufacturing engineer and an Electrical engineer (we're also looking for an accountant, and manufacturing techs). Contact me through the email link and I'll send details.

can i just

http://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/2011/06/09/behind-big-fight-at-opec/

Oil prices may rocket around for a while, due to tensions in the Mideast. That's what happened in the Arab oil embargo of 1973 and 1974, slapped on this country after the U.S.'s support of Israel in the seven-day war. Oil prices soared higher after the Iranian revolution in 1979, and a year later after war broke out between Iraq and Iran the next year.

Saudi Arabia, the central bank of oil, may win the fight here, which means lower gas prices. Saudi Arabia has the spare capacity to pump, an estimated 4.5 million extra barrels a day.

No one really knows what Saudi Arabia's estimated spare capacity is. Fox says 4.5 million, the NYT article the other says "2.5 million to 3 million". Others would argue for a lower figure, particularly the late Matt Simmons, who suggested that Saudi reserves were overestimated and that production would peak soon. Simmons also joined a chorus of other people who are critical of the cloak of secrecy surrounding reserve figures in OPEC countries, and their unreliability. This is a fossil fuel that's pretty much the cornerstone of modern life, and OPEC countries are clearly making shit up when it comes to reported reserves.

There's a good discussion of this here: http://www.theoildrum.com/node/7149

According to the BP statistical review of world energy 2010, the big six Middle East OPEC oil producers (Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Unite Arab Emirates (UAE) and Qatar) had 743 billion barrels (Gbs) of proved oil reserves (1P) between them, representing 56% of reported proved global oil reserves. Knowledge of this bounty provides OECD governments with much comfort. The trouble is there is no chance these figures are correct.

http://www.theoildrum.com/files/MEOPEC_booked_1P.png

would be very curious to see what sanpaku/others have to say about that

lol at that graph

reserves just keep getting bigger and bigger! peak oil is a myth!

actually, i posted it w/ nearly complete disregard for her analysis. it's the most poorly written thing ive ever seen posted on major website, it's hilarious.

reax in office:
"i almost feel sorry for her having that under her byline."
"dude, she was an editor at forbes and works at foxnews business. i wouldn't feel bad if she keeled over stomping grapes."

The golden age of OPEC was really born back in 1999 when oil price plunged to an adjusted for inflation near all time low. The cheating cartel realized that if they did not ban tighter and actually cut production they would all drown in a sea of oil.

must be a straight transcription of video, right?

The recent figures for OPEC oil reserves may be close to correct, but the important thing to note is that reserves is an economic category, not a geological one. Increase the price to $300/bbl, and some marginal resources will be shifted over to the reserve category.

The OPEC reserve amendments didn't occur due to to any field discoveries, which have been anemic since the 1960s, but due to the late 80's "quota war", in which each OPEC member attempted to maximise reserves to increase their OPEC permitted production quota.

I strongly suspect the discussions this year may be the last at which OPEC could have any influence, as Chris Skrebowski's Megaprojects database indicates there will be marked dropoffs in new production in 2012, and again in 2014. These, as always, are struggling to counteract a 4.7% depletion rate in existing oil field developments, and ramping demand from the developing world.

http://www.crudeoilpeak.com/wp-content/gallery/cache/440__640x480_megaprojects_skrebowski_aspo_usa_2007_2015.jpg

I would be on the waiting list for a mid-2012 plug-in Prius if there was one (the Volt only makes 40 mpg). At present, my adaptations are limited to CFLs/conservation, learning composting/gardening, and searching for a first home in a walkable neighborhood.

I was interested in converting my Prius to all-electric and then I found out the electric battery takes up the ENTIRE TRUNK. uh, no.

With regard to Saudi spare capacity, a bullish (on price) commenter had this to say today (edited):

When the Kingdom announced a target of 12.5 MILLION barrels of capacity, they actually committed funds to develop that capacity and we’ve seen them now commissioning those: 250,000 additional barrels in Shaybah; 1.2 MILLION barrels in Khurais; 500,000 in Khursaniyah; 900,000 coming on stream in a couple of years in Manifa. So these are real projects and real capacities.

It must be at least 6 years, perhaps 7 since the Saudis said that their decline rate was 600,000 barrels a day each year.

So in the last 6 years they have lost about 3.6 million a day due to declines.

During that time according to this they have brought on line around 2 million of new projects, and perhaps with reworks and infill drilling they may be treading water.

I suspect much of their 2010 spare capacity of around 2-2.5 mbbl/d is already committed to ameliorating Libya shortfalls. They're mostly trying to jawbone futures traders out of long positions (much like the purely verbal "strong dollar" policy of the U.S. Treasury).

Also, U.S. media follows Cushing WTI (which is supressed by Canadian inflows and no additional outflows). The Pros follow Brent (which most oil, including that produced offshore Louisiana, is priced off).

http://freeserv.dukascopy.com:8080/ChartServer/chart?stock_id=504&interval=86400&points_number=100&view_type=line&width=460&height=320&show_labels=true&osc_type=-1&rfi=false&osc_height=100&p1=2&p2=3&p3=7&c=5172220
http://freeserv.dukascopy.com:8080/ChartServer/chart?stock_id=505&interval=86400&points_number=100&view_type=line&width=460&height=320&show_labels=true&osc_type=-1&rfi=false&osc_height=100&p1=2&p2=3&p3=7&c=5172139

These were supposed to post above.
http://i52.tinypic.com/iqfmmu.png
http://i51.tinypic.com/2j4efxz.png

The Saudi announcement had the desired effect of suppressing WTI, which matters to commodity speculators and a few refineries in the U.S. midcontinent/midwest. The rest of the worlds (including other U.S.) petroleum supply is traded at fixed discounts/premiums to Brent, which just didn't give a fuck.

xp shakey:
It seems unlikely that battery volume/weight will ever be comparable to that of combustible liquids of equal energy content. The redox reaction of chemical batteries obliges them to contain their own oxidizer, whereas atmospheric oxygen provides ~3/4 of the reactants in internal combustion engines.

Electric cars can otherwise be more efficient, but the volume/weight for the "fuel tank" will likely always seem huge. The Chevy Cruize Eco wrings 40 miles out of 6 lbs of fuel. The Chevy Volt (on the same chassis) requires about 385 lbs of battery pack for the same distance.

Since we were recently talking about this, here's another article about Saudi Arabia's ability to ramp up production: http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/06/13/us-energy-summit-goldman-idUSTRE75C44V20110613

Saudi Arabia's cushion of spare oil capacity would shrink to almost nothing if the kingdom quickly ramps up to 10 million barrels per day (bpd), Goldman Sachs' global head of commodities research said on Monday.

Last week the kingdom said it would unilaterally produce as much oil as the market needed after the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries failed to reach agreement as a whole on output policy.

Saudi newspaper al-Hayat reported Saudi Arabia would boost output to 10 million bpd in July, which Jeff Currie of Goldman Sachs said would leave only 500,000 bpd spare.

"If you get up to (10 mln bpd) you start to really create a very tight market relative to spare capacity," he told the Reuters Global Energy and Climate Summit.

Wow, didn't realize DVRs sucked up so much energy!

http://thinkprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/dvrenergy.jpg

In 2010, set-top boxes in the United States consumed approximately 27 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity, which is equivalent to the annual output of nine average (500 MW) coal-fired power plants. The electricity required to operate all U.S. boxes is equal to the annual household electricity consumption of the entire state of Maryland, results in 16 million metric tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, and costs households more than $3 billion each year.

NRDC report

Hard drives are hot, and in DVRs they are almost always running.

http://www.desmogblog.com/talisman-energy-targets-children-friendly-fracosaurus-gas-coloring-book

haha this is so funny I want to kill myself

FWIW, here's what petroleum engineer acquaintance had to say about fraccing:

Poor cement jobs are basically the cause of all subsurface contamination and even the BP blow out. Don't worry about your state's fraccing laws as much as its cement laws. The main things you want are requirements to run "cement bond logs" and to "cement to surface". There ain't no way in fuck that fractures are traveling upwards thousands of feet through rock. Two nuclear bombs being set off at the same time managed 500 feet. All tools used to measure fracture growth run on tens of thousands of frac jobs have never seen vertical growth past a couple hundred feet and those are considered failures.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQqDS9wGsxQ

just posted this on the economic shitbin thread, but thought i'd put it here too

It won't kill you, ergo...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8X8_wUoiq0

The next entry in NYT's excellent series of articles about fracking, Drilling Down ,is out, and it addresses something that Sanpaku's petroleum engineer acquaintance said ("There ain't no way in fuck that fractures are traveling upwards thousands of feet through rock") a few posts above:

For decades, oil and gas industry executives as well as regulators have maintained that a drilling technique known as hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, that is used for most natural gas wells has never contaminated underground drinking water.

The claim is based in part on a simple fact: fracking, in which water and toxic chemicals are injected at high pressure into the ground to break up rocks and release the gas trapped there, occurs thousands of feet below drinking-water aquifers. Because of that distance, the drilling chemicals pose no risk, industry officials have argued.

“There have been over a million wells hydraulically fractured in the history of the industry, and there is not one, not one, reported case of a freshwater aquifer having ever been contaminated from hydraulic fracturing. Not one,” Rex W. Tillerson, the chief executive of ExxonMobil, said last year at a Congressional hearing on drilling.

It is a refrain that not only drilling proponents, but also state and federal lawmakers, even past and present Environmental Protection Agency directors, have repeated often.

But there is in fact a documented case, and the E.P.A. report that discussed it suggests there may be more. Researchers, however, were unable to investigate many suspected cases because their details were sealed from the public when energy companies settled lawsuits with landowners.

Current and former E.P.A. officials say this practice continues to prevent them from fully assessing the risks of certain types of gas drilling.

colonel tigh could not be reached for comment

The point wrt to hydraulic fracturing I related above is that its not the propagation of frac liquids through fractures per se that poses the threat to shallow aquifers, but inadequate cement jobs (ala Deepwater Horizon) that permit the frac liquid to run up the annular space around the wellbore. Require cement logs (perhaps with independent or government assessment) of all wells prior to hydraulic fracturing, and then presumably the likelihood of ingress would be minimized.

tbf sanpaku that sounds like exactly the kind of received wisdom that gets passed around until it's proven not true anymore, like arson investigators in texas. I'm not saying that it is, but adamant repudiation from experts is no guarantee of anything.

even if it does turn out that fracking is an issue that can be largely addressed by improved processes and safeguards, that just highlights the dire need for it to be strongly and consistently regulated, aka, the opposite of now

so the us energy department is 'cautiously recommending' fracking

http://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/the-monitors-view/2011/0811/Yes-let-s-frack-with-caution

yet a recent, peer reviewed study from duke university has found evidence of methane contamination of wells in areas with fracking

http://www.csmonitor.com/Environment/2011/0509/Fracking-for-natural-gas-is-polluting-ground-water-study-concludes

good job guys

(last thread spam, promise)

Some of you may have heard about the Tar Sands protests at the White House, running every day from Aug 20th - Sept. 3rd. 322 arrests have been made so far.

The media coverage is starting to pick up steam:

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2011/08/tar-sands-xl-keystone-pipeline-protest.html
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/08/why-far-off-canadian-tar-sands-have-become-a-make-or-break-issue-for-obama-with-enviros.php?ref=fpb
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0811/61837.html#ixzz1W4D5RzZZ

If any of you are willing to join me on Sept. 3rd, here's a pretty detailed account of what you're in for:

http://www.tarsandsaction.org/adam-maynard-we-shall-overcome-tar-sands/
http://www.tarsandsaction.org/update-from-legal-support-team/

"Processing once we arrived at the jailhouse was relatively painless. One by one they snapped off our plastic cuffs and led us to a long table staffed with officers who had us fill out paperwork for our release. Because of the low severity of our crime – we were charged with failure to obey a lawful order (aka get off the sidewalk) – and the benevolence of the Park Police, we were granted a “post and forfeit” release. Under these terms we could pay a $100 fine instead of staying overnight in jail and arranging a date in court. Thankfully we were instructed to have cash on us beforehand, and we were all out of police custody by 2:00 or so. Not so bad considering arrests had started around 11:30. I also want to make a point of saying that the DC Park Police were courteous and professional throughout the process, and I hope they spend my $100 wisely."

After being relative assholes on the first day (the Park Police decided to try to deter future protesters by holding them for 2 days overnight in jail), all of the protesters are now getting charged with "Failure to Obey" (a traffic charge less than a misdemeanor) and a "post and forfeit" release, which entails a $100 fine and an immediate release.

Sept. 3rd is the last day of the protests, and will probably have the most people and the most coverage. If any of you want to kick it in the paddywagon with me for an hour or so on the 3rd I'd welcome your company. Or, of course, if you can make it on any other day, even just to register your support (no arrest/fine), please do.

so anyway...

nice piece by kevin drum here. nothing new, really, but it's a nice brief summary that will reach a much greater audience than oildrum.com stuff ever does.

Basically, we're stuck with two stubborn observations. First, world demand for oil is very near its production ceiling, which means that even small increases in demand (or small disruptions in supply) now result in large oil price spikes. And increases in demand are inevitable every time the economy starts growing even modestly. Second, even small increases in the price of oil cause large GDP losses. Price spikes of 20 to 30 percent are likely to be common in the future as we periodically bump up against production ceilings, and if Hamilton's model is correct, this will produce subsequent declines in GDP of 3 to 5 percentage points. That's huge. The effect on world GDP may be less pronounced, but it will still be significant.

If this model is accurate—and if the ceiling on global oil production really is around 90 mbd and can be expanded only slowly—it means that every time the global economy starts to reach even moderate growth rates, demand for oil will quickly bump up against supply constraints, prices will spike, and we'll be thrown back into recession. Rinse and repeat.

Ruffalo's Tar Sands protest video was posted on the Mark Ruffalo thread :)

i think i've said this before but larry elliot predicted a few months ago that near-term the price of oil would be around $80/barrel (because of the "coming recession" as he put it then) and long-term, $300/barrel

mazeltov

Ruffalo's nice and all, but the real reason that I'm doing it is the potential presence of Danny Glover

I wouldn't worry. The Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline from Alberta to Kitimat, B.C.will ensure that the ultimate onus for oil sands related climate change will fall upon the Chinese rather than the great South. The US will (desperate to keep its 70 year malinvestment in suburbs viable) end up sourcing from liquids sources with still higher carbon costs like Fischer-Tropsch gas-to-liquids and coal-to-liquids. Progressives will continue their opposition to actual low carbon energy like offshore-wind and 4th gen nuclear, at least those who aren't starving.

i'll just go back to sitting on my hands then, thanks!

progressives oppose off-shore wind? huh

still don't know why we haven't filled the chihuahua desert with mirrors and gotten on with our lives

Desert tortoises might be impacted. As for offshre wind, self-idntified environmentalists want it off somebody else's shore.

Barring environmentalists purchasing Suncor, Syncrude, etc. the Athabasca oil sands will be produced, and its eminently plausible that producers will eventually place some Candu reactor to produce steam should carbon taxes become high enough. I'm just much less concerned about this than the concurrent attempts to build NW export terminals for powder river coal, which gets a small fraction of the press and which could be an order of magnitude more important as emissions go.

^mea. Ulpa on typos. Posting from ipad in sickbed.

Yep, agreed that RFK Jr.'s opposition to offshore wind is/was impossibly frustrating. And yeah, agree that the PRB coal terminals to China are just as likely to push us over the tipping point than the exploitation of tar sands, if not more so. but the presence of other energy/climate debacles doesn't mean that protests against Keystone XL are pointless or misguided. you have to go to where the energy is (no pun intended), and if a bunch of prominent environmental leaders, activists, organizations and danny glover are rallying around the largest display of green civil disobedience in 20 years and putting pressure on the Obama administration to exhibit a hint of global leadership on this cause, that's worth supporting.

I was under the impression that opposition to offshore wind power was largely the result of astroturfing by oil companies.

would like to setup a script so that whenever anyone on the internet posts something similar to "if only obama would support domestic drilling, THEN we'd have lower gas prices!!!", this image is automatically posted in response:

http://a5.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc7/298734_10150284423800959_638030958_7862025_1975161_n.jpg

He or whomever succeeds him needs to say "enough is known about the geology of the US to say with some confidence, that all the "easy" oil, save a few spots around Alaska, is gone. All that's left is low flow rate shale beds, small satellite deposits, and very deep water, none of which are economic at <$3/gal gas. The throughput possible if all of these were put into production isn't enough to budge global supply by more than a few percent a year, a supply that will be rapidly absorbed by developing market demand in a couple of years even at current prices. The east coast and west coast north of Los Angeles haven't been drilled not because they've been off limits, but because oil companies found them to be non-prospective (source rocks hadn't been buried deep enough for maturation) before the Federal Government put them off limits. All of the oil with positive energy return on energy invested will be produced someday, including ANWR, but its best for our grandchildren to keep some in reserve till later this century when it will be deperately needed as a chemical feedstock, rather than to be merely blow it out the exhaust of present day commuter's SUVs."

tl, dr

lol sanpaku, presidential speechwriting is not your thing.

also dude, a few environmental purists who care (too much) about the desert tortoise /= "progressives"

none of which are economic at <$3/gal gas

This is the key point that needs to be made. The fact that far from reducing gas prices, building the infrastructure for unconventional oil actually locks us into a dependency on a source of fuel that MUST be expensive.

I made a very similar point in a facebook note I posted a few hours ago (the ultimate tl;dr) explaining my arrest this coming Saturday at the Tar Sands action.

For all the effort that Obama apparently makes toward being perceived as the Adult in the Room, he needs to speak honestly about our energy options.