Posted on 11/16/2005 1:46:45 PM PST by dangerdoc
I am disgusted as I read the news. We buy oil from petty tyrants. South American thugs bad-talk us and threaten to shut off the tap. Middle-East royalty, two generations from living in mud huts fund jihadists who want to cut off our heads. We compete with communist slave-workers for oil driving up the prices. We may or may not be running out of the stuff creating the real possibility that we are going have to find a replacement anyway.
Honestly, our oil economy is going to hurt us at some point. I don’t know if it will be now in the form of sending our wealth out to people who want to harm us or from having to go off the stuff cold turkey at some point in the future. I personally believe it will be the former. I am concerned about oil funded nuclear technology going to oil funded terrorists brought into our country because of our lack of foresight.
Last century a petrochemical economy made sense. This century things are changing and we need to stay ahead of the curve.
If we need to replace oil what should we replace it with?
Hydrogen? Don’t believe what you hear. The best source of hydrogen is petrochemicals. It is not economical to produce, transport or store. Hydrogen fuel cells are not very efficient when you figure in the inefficiency in getting to the vehicle and trying to store enough in the car to get anywhere.
Ethanol? Corn farmers love it but it is too inefficient to produce and we would need to actually give up food production to provide enough.
Biomass? I have spent a few weeks google searching biomass, synthesis gas and associated chemistry. It seems like a reasonable approach. Synthetic gasoline and diesel should be fairly easy to produce on a commercial scale. It would be no more obtrusive than an oil refinery and would use fairly similar technology. It has not been commercially pursued because of the cost. Although synthetic fuels could probably be produced for less than $2 a gallon, the concern is that OPEC would respond by flooding the market with oil and bankrupt any company that invested in this type of technology. I’ve seen some conspiracy theories that the oil companies are trying to suppress biomass but I don’t think that makes sense. The oil companies’ expertise would lead them to dominate the field. Almost every step in conversion exists in modern petrochemical cracking plants. As an added bonus, it would divert money from overseas and back to the farm economy.
I’ve read that Saudi Arabia can deliver oil at less than $10 a barrel and would deplete their reserves as quickly as possible if a reasonable oil replacement were ever seen on the horizon. This is not a conspiracy, just simple economics. They have a limited supply and will work to get as much for it as possible. If a their product will be made useless, they will try to sell all they can while they can. All of this prevents companies from investing in alternative fuel technology even though the prices keep going up.
I really don’t like the government getting involved in economics and I know that the free market will solve the problem eventually but I am very concerned about where our oil dollars are going. I see this as a security issue. Can we begin development of a replacement strategy in a step-wisemannor. Do we need some sort of a price support structure to encourage the development. Do we need to summon the resolve and stop or ban the import of oil. I see real problems with almost any strategy that involves the government.
I am curious about people’s thoughts. I have numbers showing biomass is reasonable from an economic standpoint based on current oil prices.
Specifically I am curious if there are any petrochemical engineers, economists or even politicians out there with an opinion. I can share specifics but there are literally hundreds of pages and everything I have is available on the internet.
Good point. My understanding is that 45% of the oil used in the U.S. is used in the form of refined gasoline. The other 55% is used as diesel fuel, aviation fuel, lubricants, plastics, etc.
Even with the elevated price of oil now ethanol still requires ggovernment subsidy to be marketable. It is a pretend alternative that is pushed and subsidized to keep tax money going to "the farmers."
It's in limited supply, but yes we do. There are two other conversions you can get for your auto - one, you can set it to run on vegetable oil: some hobbyists have done that with good results (it's by far the cheapest - only 2p a mile cost), and also one can set it to run on natural gas (more expensive, but less than petrol).
Diesels are less taboo over here - you can get many small diesel cars.
Regards, Ivan
Because we would still be locked into a higher cost of energy than our competitors world wide. That would hurt us. As far as biomass being stable, that's unlikely. Crops vary significanlty. It rains too much, it doesn't rain enough etc.
And Mexico is now #3, which means two of our three largest suppliers are non-OPEC countries.
Here in the land of (beer) homebrewing, a number of people are instead starting to homebrew biodiesel. In fact, there's a co-op preparing to do so in decent quantities.
Years ago Saudi Arabia was less than 10% of the total oil consumed in the US. So it sounds like it is even less now.
"Because we would still be locked into a higher cost of energy than our competitors world wide."
Competitors? Who are we competing with on price?
I guess you're saying that you'd prefer that we us just continue to gyrate wildly, like a yo-yo on a string, while games are played with the current sources of supply? This doesn't sound like a good course to pursue.
And, biomass isn't the only game. Oil shale, oil sands and coal gassification, plus expanded nuclear power generation are doable now, provided OPEC doesn't pull the rug out from under it again by dropping to $20.00/bbl., and they will, if the past is any indication.
"Ethanol? Corn farmers love it but it is too inefficient to produce and we would need to actually give up food production to provide enough."
If the food value of corn really matters, then why is corn selling for $1.80 a bushel now and corn sold for $2.00 a bushel in 1965? Given the rate of inflation that bushel is worth about 25 cents 1965 dollars. Yeah, the production costs have gone up considerably with $3.00 a gallon diesel fuel and double digit inflation of fertilizer prices.
Might as well make ethanol and the incidental side product of high protein livestock feed rather than give corn away to feed the hungry who obviously aren't paying for their corn flakes..because they cost $4.00 a box for 12 ounces.
Let me see.... a bushel of corn is 56 pounds. At $4.00 a box times 70- 12 ounce boxes, somebody is making $280.00 a bushel minus the $1.80 paid to the corn farmer, or $278.20 a bushel.
We just as well burn corn as to get shafted. The land is already there. Farmers pay a higher percentage of their income in taxes than do the oil companies. Farmers still manage to invest in infrastructure. something oil companies have neglected to do given the huge profits of late.
We need the fuel. And the ethanol can be produced much cheaper than a box of corn flakes, which has about as much energy value as it has food value.
Back to coal. Gasoline can be made from coal, the process is 100 years old, and they do it now in South Africa. America has very large supplies of easy to mine coal, and beyond that there is deep coal that might be converted to liquid fuel insitu. If you are a true believer in carbon dioxide induced global warming the plan is not so cool, but the sceptics can forge ahead.
There was a proposed coal gassification plant in northern Missouri back in the late 1970's (after the first oil price gasoline spike and the inflation that resulted.)
The plant was to use high sulphur coal which is abundant in the region and was being phased out of power plants. There was a huge lake included in the project to use for cooling the massive plant, as well as providing jobs and recreation for an otherwise poor region.
Between the EPA, and the Corp of Engineers, the project cost became so highly inflated that the project was killed.
Now that gasoline is about 3 times the cost that it was at that time, the economics would have worked out well for investors as well as the influx of jobs the plant would have created. Not to mention the jobs lost when the coal mines closed....the idea was scrapped.
Now there is once again some talk about similar projects. The same talk that 30 years ago brought Americans nothing to show for the warning shots fired at us by OPEC except what we face now from that inaction.
Remembering my history......the NAZI war machine was fueled by coal gas for a large part of WW2. But with territorial conquests the NAZI's had to take middle east oil fields to fuel their war machine.
A coal gasification initiative could fuel much of America.
But alas.....just more talk.
Here we go again.
Well, we could try running on what the Liberals run on - hot air!
Could the oil coming out of Canada and Mexico be profitably produced if OPEC were to drop prices down to something like cost + 10%?
My understanding is that oil in the ME can be extracted for around $10/barrel. As the lowest-cost volume producer (assuming they are), they have the power and ability to set a price at which they can maximize profits and minimize competition. Everyone else is only in the business because OPEC has prices set high enough that their costs are still below OPEC's price. Should OPEC drop prices below other producers' costs, they'd be out of business.
That's how I understood OPEC to be in control of the world oil market.
Farmers just as well convert soybeans and corn into fuel. They cannot sell their products overseas because of European import tariffs. Thus, the prices of corn are in the $1.80 a bushel range now compared to $2.00 a bushel in 1965. In todays dollar value, farmers are getting about 25 cents a bushel in 1965 dollars. Machinery, fertilizer, diesel fuel, and property taxes are at todays prices.
Lets keep the farmers in business. On shore production of food is as much of a national security issue as homeland energy production. Farmers can accomplish both.
And then we don't have to subsidize big oil with military protection of their unstable foreign sources and the subsequent loss of life defending their sources.
Maybe we ought to try a little rope-a-dope on them. Make them (and the world) believe that we are on the edge of replacing their oil with our synthetic fuel, and watch the prices tumble. Use the respite to truly gear up for the replacement of fossil fuels.
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