Posted on 08/04/2016 12:58:31 AM PDT by Kaslin
Saudi Arabia knew that North American shale production could potentially torpedo their hold on the energy market via oil. So, they decided to trounce the natural gas market by opening the floodgates with petroleum. It didn’t work. The Telegraph now reports that shale production has cut prices so low that they can produce at prices that are lower that what’s required to keep Saudi Arabia’s socioeconomic fabric healthy:
Opec's worst fears are coming true. Twenty months after Saudi Arabia took the fateful decision to flood world markets with oil, it has still failed to break the back of the US shale industry.
The Saudi-led Gulf states have certainly succeeded in killing off a string of global mega-projects in deep waters. Investment in upstream exploration from 2014 to 2020 will be $1.8 trillion less than previously assumed, according to consultants IHS. But this is a bitter victory at best.
North America's hydraulic frackers are cutting costs so fast that most can now produce at prices far below levels needed to fund the Saudi welfare state and its military machine, or to cover Opec budget deficits.
[…]
Scott Sheffield, the outgoing chief of Pioneer Natural Resources, threw down the gauntlet last week - with some poetic licence - claiming that his pre-tax production costs in the Permian Basin of West Texas have fallen to $2.25 a barrel.
"Definitely we can compete with anything that Saudi Arabia has. We have the best rock," he said.
And yet, Democrats can’t stand this type of energy production. They’ve banned it in New York over trumped up fears about environmental damage. The most insane being that fracking causes earthquakes. It doesn’t. Oh, and that fracking pollutes drinking water. Again, it doesn’t.
Cheap oil/gasoline runs counter to progressive plans for America. More people driving is bad.
...but they still find enough money to keep their fanatical Wahhabi clerics funded at home and their “Islamic Study Centers” (basically jihadi recruitment centers) funded abroad.
The American people are finally coming around to the realization that the Democratic and Republican elites are on the same side: against the American people. Your photo of Obama and Bush fawning over the Saudi Royals is just one of many examples.
Your abject worship of the Bush clan would be sickening if it weren't so damn funny. Usually you see this kind of behavior among the sycophants of Third World caudillos. Perhaps that's appropriate, since that's pretty much the Bush vision of themselves and America.
Watching the events of the last 36 years, I have come to believe that "Poppy" Bush is the architect of Uniparty. I'd say the old man, who was imposed on Reagan, never ceased to be CIA. With both CIA and oil business connections, intelligence (i.e., useful information) he set the Saudi money train in motion to buy American politicians at every level.
(Hillary and Bill, Barbara Bush's "other son," are obviously students of "Poppy" having created their own independent operation. That independence was probably one of Hillary's demands to cooperate in the con.)
In this way, he and his cabal were able to control the Executive Branch and, in time, the Legislative branch as well. Having 535 people to work on, that took a little longer but it happened eventually with the fall of Speaker Newt and the improbable rise of the perfectly blackmailable Denny Hastert.
God help us all.
I wouldn’t wish for it. Their rulers, corrupt as they are, are the only thing which has kept these inbred savages going into full ISIS mode.
The bombshell in the article for me, was the claim that they had reduced pre-tax production cost in West Texas to $2.25/bbl.
There’s an earthquake for you.
I imagine that he is trying to sell drilling services, and excluding lots of other necessary costs, but that is still damn low.
The “Shale Band” for economic oil production has generally been viewed as $45-$65/bbl - which is low enough to seriously take the Saudis down a few notches long term.
If the technology improves to take the production threshold down so low long term (say $20, fully loaded), it will beggar the Saudis (and push off the projected energy market impact of solar cell improvements for another decade).
We are sitting on hundreds of years worth of shale oil and gas, and huge deposits in Russia, China and Argentina have not even begun to be developed yet.
They sure aren’t
He’s looking at him
Guy in the wheelchair appears to be FDR meeting Saudi king 1945?
I call total BS on that! Since basically all these Greenie sites are reporting that the cost of power from solar panels is currently around 12 cents per kwh (which is a total lie to begin with), all we have to do is install 8x as many of them and solar power will be only lets see... 12 - 25% = 12 - 3 = 9 cents per kwh if there are twice as many. Then 9 - 25% = 9 - 2.25 = 6.75 cents per kwh if there are 4 times as many. Then 6.75 - 25% - 6.75 - 1.6875 = 5.06 per kwh if there are 8 times as many. That would be nice, but unfortunately, it doesn't pass the sniff test. I am afraid that you are drinking the Democrat Kool-Aid on this one.
We actually installed solar panels on our camper van with 4 giant golf cart batteries and a great big inverter. We spent several thousand dollars on the setup. The first problem is that if you drove the van around town at all, carrying all of those heavy batteries used a heck of a lot more gasoline. The other thing is that the output from the panels is of course marginal if you are not in bright sunlight. It turns out that a four 90 watt solar panels put out less than 60 watts in typical fall and winter weather around here if you are lucky, and of course even at their full rated capacity that is still less than a third of what a typical 100 amp / 1200 watt van alternator puts out.
So once the batteries became discharged it would sometimes take days to charge them back up. We eventually had to hook the batteries to the alternator and through painful and expensive experience... disconnect the solar panels to keep them from getting damaged when we were charging the batteries with the alternator.
Of course the alternator or a portable generator puts out vastly more current than the cheesy solar panels and unfortunately, the solar panels actually do have a limited life span.
As it turns out we consider the money we wasted on the solar panels to be just that, wasted. I do not know how they come up with the 12 cents a kilowatt hour figure. It is a big lie. But don't take my word for it... go spend a few thousand of your own hard earned dollars on solar panels and see how it turns out for you. Without a huge government subsidy, it is a guaranteed loser. And don't even get me started on the giant bird killing windmills. They are the most disgusting waste of tax payer dollars in the history of the country.
“Without a huge government subsidy, it (solar) is a guaranteed loser.”
That has been the case for a long while, but the technology (Panels and batteries) have been steadily improving.
At some point along the improvement curve, solar becomes cost effective for a particular application. Initially, it was only cost effective in extreme off the grid niches, like powering satellites. Now it is pretty effective for for low power off the grid applications like emergency power on sailboats, mobile traffic signs, LED lights and things.
But if the cost effectiveness continues to improve (like a slower version of Moore’s Law for computer chip advances), it eventually becomes competitive with mainstream sources for grid generation - and then becomes compellingly more cost effective.
So can solar get so much better, and if so, when?
Theoretically, it can. Einstein actually was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on photovoltaics, and he projected the solar would become a game-changing energy source, based on his calculations. The efficiency of solar cells has continued to improve, and the lifecycle costs per kilowatt hour has continued to decline.
Folks in the business anticipate that they will be able to continue these technical gains without any revolutionary breakthroughs - to make it a competitive source of electricity (without subsidies) this decade. They argue that the latest versions entering production are already there. But in five or ten years, they will be compelling.
Unless other sources (like frackking) reduce their costs as quickly, solar will start displacing other sources. Investment analysts are actually anticipating this. It is a tidal wave that threatens to sweep away Saudi wealth in the next decade, if they fail to diversify.
For a long time, folks anticipated computers would able to do face and speech recognition, but they repeatedly fell short of forecasts. Now that RAM and processing chips have become cheap and powerful enough, voice recognition is taking over telemarketing, and Facebook’s automated facial recognition is better than most humans. Solar keeps getting better and cheaper too.
Anyhow, here are a couple of articles from Bloomberg with good info. The first one talks some about the low solar prices from renewable energy auctions. The second article is a comprehensive analysis from Bloomberg New Energy Finance.
Amen and Amen!
Batteries are getting better too. I am getting an electric bicycle soon. Just a few years ago, they needed 3-5 sealed lead acid batteries (like car batteries). The one I am getting has a 5 pound Lithium Ion battery the size of a book. It can take me 20 miles without pedaling, and recharge in five hours, for less than 10 cents. Graphene infused batteries, like the recently unvieled G King, with hold more juice in the same size, and recharge in 15 minutes.
Correct.
“It is based solely on the article written by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, who writes a lot of goofy articles.”
I used to like reading AEP but then found it very frustrating when he seemed to swing 180 degrees from the position he held the previous week, “The Sky is Falling!” would be followed a week later by “Happy Days are Here Again!”.
The thing was the Daily Telegraph used to allow comments and I used to scan Ambrose’s articles and then go straight to the comments when other, more knowledgeable people like yourself, would point out the whopping big flaws in his reasoning and logic.
Since the Telegraph stopped allowing comments I don’t even bother scanning AEP’s articles now.
“Besides the oil issue, another reason US governments have been absurdly friendly with Saudi Arabia is because of Iran.”
I have said it before but for the life of me I cannot comprehend how it is that in the civil war that is ongoing in Islam the US has opted to back the desert-living Bedouin tribesmen with their medieval and barbaric life style against the civilised and relatively (these things are very relative) advanced, tolerant, civilised Persians.
Jews and Christians live in relative (again) peace in Iran, Iranian women can vote and go to school, it has a western-minded modern population but instead the US backs the head-chopping savages of Saudi Arabia.
Surely there has come a time for a Nixon in China moment, or Reagan meets Gorbachev, surely the US should reach out to the Iranians and leave behind their “good friends” the Saudis? It wasn’t the Iranians who brought down the twin towers.
But then I suppose Saudi oil money buys you a lot of friends in Washington DC.
I am tinkerer; as it turns out it was kind of a stupid idea. But I drank the Kool-Aid like the two of you have and went a step further and used my wallet and not just my mouth. I have also put together an electric bicycle using parts purchased through eBay. I wanted to use it to commute to work to save money. It was kind of fun for a while, but it didn't work out in the long run. I ended up selling it because even with fancy batteries... a car or motorcycle is a much better commuting option. And it is just easier to use a normal bicycle 90% of the time for recreation. What is the point of having a motor it you want to go out for a recreational bike ride?
As far as the new technology batteries go... there has been very little improvement in cost or what is available to consumers in the last ten years for batteries that are appropriate for bicycles.
We have friends who live off the grid using solar panels, batteries and a generator that runs on propane. If it were not for the subsidies that they received on the solar panels, batteries and inverter; it certainly would not ever actually have paid for itself vs. just using a propane generator. The solar system with batteries and inverter cost tens of thousands of dollars. The batteries especially require lots of attention. The generator which has several times the capacity cost around $500 and converting it to Propane cost them a couple hundred dollars.
We live in an area that has frequent power outages. We have two back-up generators and have converted the one we use to natural gas. It is 25 years old and has a 10 hp Briggs and Stratton engine. It has run weeks at a time without a hiccup on occasion. I just check the oil level every day when we are running it 24 hours a day. Other than adding and changing the oil and air filters very infrequently it has required no maintenance. I bought the second generator in case the old one breaks. But it still hasn't had a hiccup. We paid less than $500 for each of them.
You can read all the articles you want pushing solar, but if you haven't actually installed a system and tried it out you just do not know what you are talking about. The truth is that a solar system without a backup generator is next to useless. They cost a fortune without subsidies; and even then they have a fraction of the capacity compared to a generator in most cases. As far as the batteries... people are still mostly using golf cart batteries, because they are still the best value vs. performance solution, the same basic technology that has been around since telegraphs and steam locomotives were revolutionary technology.
Unlike computer technology no matter what your charts and articles are claiming there has been little improvement in actual cost or performance for what is available to consumers over the past decade. The articles you posted are pure leftist propaganda. Instead of reading articles... go shop for a system... you will see what I am talking about.
I essentially agree with you that the large subsidies on solar power have been essentially wasted (malinvestment), and that that solar has not been cost effective for most purposes. Off grid/emergency power are exceptions, where it can be worth paying a premium.
Part of the reason that consumer products have progressed more slowly in capability than advances in the lab, is that subsidized factories, have to continue to produce their (rapidly out of date) products for years, to pay off their investment.
More optimally, the Government would only subsidize basic research, and leave the much more capital intensive commercial product development to private investment - when the technology is actually profitable to produce. Pouring billions into technology that is not ready for prime time, is wasting investment that would be more productive elsewhere (malinvestment).
There is some marginal learning and efficiencies that occur from scale and experience in the field with the products - but you have to pay a huge premium for those marginal gains.
I also agree that there is always a bunch of overly optimistic hype promoted by kool aid drinking fanboys, and those who profit from subsidy rackets (leftists and their cronies).
For, example, I objected to the premise implied by the chart, that the advances in cost/efficiency/capability of solar technology, were the result of how much had been installed (Causation) - as if installing solar panels caused them to get better. I believe that implication is just used (rhetorically) to justify more subsidies. Research is what improves the technology, and subsidizing massive production is a much less efficient way of stimulating research, than directly subsidizing research.
Nonetheless, I believe that an objective technology forecast does support a big role for solar in the future. It does keep getting more efficient, and there does not seem to be any theoretical/physical barrier in the way of solar achieving a very compelling business case - as Einstein forecasted. (P.S. I mis-spoke earlier - his Nobel Prize was for photonics, not photovoltaics)
Personally, I have been considering solar for many years (>20), but never invested, because it did not make a good business case in my opinion. I got a small solar charger for my cell phone while backpacking, but never sank an investment for the home (I am in the city, with reliable grid electricity).
So I am not a total kool aid drinker. But I do believe that solar will likely achieve persuasive cost effectiveness, that will significantly impact energy markets (not so bullish on wind). I believe that it is just a matter of time. Based on technical trends, it seems likely that the next ten years will see systems that pay for themselves spread.
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