Petroleum and the future of civilization

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edwest2 said:
All of the renewables are coming online as investment dollars are redirected. Oil runs out as planned, new stuff appears as planned. God bless,Ed
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What new stuff is appearing to replace the disappearing oil at a scale sufficient to power suburbia?
 
Al_Masetti said:
Here is an excellent paper.

Well worth the read.

ABIOGENIC OR BIOGENIC PETROLEUM* by S.S. Penner* Center for Energy Research
… of Research Needs for Shale-Oil Recovery by FERWG-III" by S. S. Penner, … Committee on Advanced Fossil Energy Technologies, S. S. Penner, Chairman, Energy …
ddponline.org/ppt/06penner.pdf
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It might be worth the read for what-if dreams but I know of nobody in the oil buisnes who actually believe this.

Rather they fully accept the following argument
Petroleum: To Be Or Not To Be Abiogenic
 
One “cute” thing about the Amish (and there are different varieties) is that although they may personally only drive a horse and buggy, they are perfectly fine about riding in YOUR automobile.

Hmmmm.

And, they have a problem with gasoline engine vehicles (that have electric spark ignition), but don’t seem to have as many problems with diesel engines (that don’t use an electrical system). Hmmmmm. [We had a next door neighbor Amish fellow who had a sawmill; and a diesel tractor fork lift truck. Hmmmmm.]
Ridgerunner said:
There are Amish and Amish. Some are just as commercial as we “English”, as they call the rest of us. What I think people consider the “Amish” way is horse-drawn, hand-made kind of production. That way of farming once absorbed the work of most of the families in the U.S., and their surplus was so limited that food was much more expensive, relatively speaking, than now. It’s picturesque, but it’s very inefficient.

It was the era in which, as the poem goes “Oh God! That bread should be so dear and flesh and blood so cheap!”

What level of population is technology telling us is optimal, and based on what? Before the turn of the century, population could have been said to have been optimal, given the resources and methods of the time. The vast number of horses it took to keep transportation and farming going consumed nearly half of all agricultural production. The pollution from manure was absolutely staggering. The percentage of land under cultivation then was greater than now.

Somebody earlier said Texas has a population of 21 million. Texas is about the same size as France, which has a population over 60 million. Texas’ population today is less than that of France during the height of the Roman Empire. And France is one of the least crowded countries in Western Europe.

Some thought needs to be given as well to the plummeting birth rates in the industrialized countries. Likely, population control in the U.S. is not even worth thinking about. If it becomes a problem in the next 20-30 years, the excess can always move to Europe, which will be emptying out rapidly by then. Well, and that much smaller European population won’t have nearly the need for fuel they have now, or the money with which to buy it.
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Glad you enjoyed it.

[At least ONE person read it! 😉 ]

Penner has written quite a bit of stuff. Google him up; you might find some other bits of his that are interesting to you.
Ridgerunner said:
Al Masetti:

Very interesting read. I have often wondered about that, because it has been known for a long time that methane percolates up constantly from the interior of the earth. I have wondered, too, whether there is any real contradiction between the biogenic and abiogenic theories. I doubt those who hold the latter view would necessarily say there is.

If, say, subduction does carry large quantities of accumulated organic material under impermeable formations, and/or if, simply, such material is covered over and over again by sedimentation that becomes impermeable, then without question percolating methane would become an “ingredient”, as it were, of the petroleum “stew”. I have never seen anyone speculate on whether this percolation is perhaps a “necessary ingredient” in the formation of petroleum as we know it.

But I have never seen, and the article touches on it but doesn’t quite get into it, any kind of estimate as to the rate of accumulation of such percolation under impermeable covers.
Obviously, it has not “refilled” many containments that have gone dry.

It’s interesting too, to reflect on the fact that actual recovery of oil in petroleum deposits is very low. One assumes that, at a point, the oil-bearing strata eventually become something like oil shale; full of oil but not flowing sufficiently to make recovery worthwhile by conventional means.

If one considers that political choices have severely hampered exploration of even conventionally recoverable deposits (e.g., the coasts of Cal and Fla, and the desert hell that is ANWAR) it’s hard to be too optimistic in the short run about such things as recovery of oil from oil shale, plentiful as those supplies seem to be.

One suspects, however, that the pressures of economic necessity will eventually force political changes.

Thank you for citing this interesting article.
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Al_Masetti said:
One “cute” thing about the Amish (and there are different varieties) is that although they may personally only drive a horse and buggy, they are perfectly fine about riding in YOUR automobile.

Hmmmm.

And, they have a problem with gasoline engine vehicles (that have electric spark ignition), but don’t seem to have as many problems with diesel engines (that don’t use an electrical system). Hmmmmm. [We had a next door neighbor Amish fellow who had a sawmill; and a diesel tractor fork lift truck. Hmmmmm.]
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and they won’t use electricity to run a refrigerator but they’ll use a propane system like those used RVs.
 
In the 1970’s the Wall Street Journal ran a column or an editorial about geopressurized methane. There was apparently a study called MOPPS (or something like that) … to wit that there was a 600 year supply of methane.

Right after that, the gummint did some backwards somersault flip-flop windshieldwiper maneouver … and came up with a MOPPS II study that sort of reversed the MOPPS I study.

And after that the whole issue seemed to have been swept under the rug … never to be seen again.
 
Doug50 said:
Nothing, as of now. Who knows maybe He3 mining on the moon will be the answer exn.ca/apollo/Future/

or maybe well be driving our cars on ammonia
memagazine.org/contents/current/webonly/webex710.html scrubbed from seawater. On the surface that actually makes the most sense since we/they can us ammonia for plant fertalizer.
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Interesting possibilities, but not enough to fuel billions of people’s daily commutes to and from suburbia. Alternative fuels alone are insufficient. We need to restructure or communities and commute patterns.
 
drpmjhess said:
Interesting possibilities, but not enough to fuel billions of people’s daily commutes to and from suburbia. Alternative fuels alone are insufficient. We need to restructure or communities and commute patterns.
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Alternative fuels might well be sufficient, (e.g., coal gasification, retorting oil shale, nuclear to replace petrol-fired utilities) but environmental concerns presently block the way, as they presently block the way to development or even exploration of offshore and arctic potential. It almost seems that some environmental groups are determined to reduce the population and/or economy by blocking avenues to development.

Some of the community restructuring might already be in the making. I have, for example, seen a vast complex or series of complexes in the Kansas side of the Kansas City metro area, in which (often heavily disgiused) businesses and industries are placed right within economically varied residential neighborhoods. That pattern is probably not unique to that area.

The commutes just can’t be all that far in those areas.
 
Ridgerunner said:
Alternative fuels might well be sufficient, (e.g., coal gasification, retorting oil shale, nuclear to replace petrol-fired utilities) but environmental concerns presently block the way, as they presently block the way to development or even exploration of offshore and arctic potential. It almost seems that some environmental groups are determined to reduce the population and/or economy by blocking avenues to development.
.
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Oil shale and tar sand will take an enormous amount of energy to process. It seems that only nuclear-generated electricity to create the necessary steam will be sufficient to extract that oil on a scale to replace what will soon be lost.
 
edwest2 said:
Looking for solutions is better than hysteria, but ‘the sky is falling’ does sell newspapers:

nytimes.com/2007/12/09/automobiles/autoreviews/09HONDA.html

God bless,
Ed
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You have to deal with reality first, Ed.
Study Sees Hydrogen Problems Requiring Decades To Solve

For example Hydrogen is so small it can leak through metal and make it brittle. (You should see what hydrogen sulfide does to oilfield equipment)

Culture Change A project of the Sustainable Energy Institute - Promoting eco-democracy since 1988
Quotes:
“No matter how you look at it, producing hydrogen from water is an energy sink. If you don’t understand this concept, please mail me ten dollars and I’ll send you back a dollar.”

No matter how it’s been made, hydrogen has no energy in it. It is the lowest energy dense fuel on earth (5). At room temperature and pressure, hydrogen takes up three thousand more times space than gasoline containing an equivalent amount of energy (3). To put energy into hydrogen, it must be compressed or liquefied. To compress hydrogen to 10,000 psi is a multi-stage process that will lose an additional 15% of the energy contained in the hydrogen.

If you liquefy it, you will be able to get more hydrogen energy into a smaller container, but you will lose 30-40% of the energy in the process. Handling it requires extreme precautions because it’s so cold – minus 423 F. Fueling is typically done mechanically with a robot arm (3).

Fuel cells are expensive. In 2003, they cost $1 million or more. At this stage, they have low reliability, need a much less expensive catalyst than platinum, can clog and lose power if there are impurities in the hydrogen, don’t last more than 1000 hours, have yet to achieve a driving range of more than 100 miles, and can’t compete with electric hybrids like the Toyota Prius, which is already more energy efficient and low in CO2 generation than projected fuel cells. (3)

Hydrogen is the Houdini of elements. As soon as you’ve gotten it into a container, it wants to get out, and since it’s the lightest of all gases, it takes a lot of effort to keep it from escaping. Storage devices need a complex set of seals, gaskets, and valves. Liquid hydrogen tanks for vehicles boil off at 3-4% per day (3, 13).

Hydrogen also tends to make metal brittle (14). Embrittled metal can create leaks. In a pipeline, it can cause cracking or fissuring, which can result in potentially catastrophic failure (3). Making metal strong enough to withstand hydrogen adds weight and cost.

Leaks also become more likely as the pressure grows higher. It can leak from un-welded connections, fuel lines, and non-metal seals such as gaskets, O-rings, pipe thread compounds, and packings. A heavy-duty fuel cell engine may have thousands of seals (15). Hydrogen has the lowest ignition point of any fuel, 20 times less than gasoline. So if there’s a leak, it can be ignited by a cell phone, a storm miles away (16), or the static from sliding on a car seat.

Leaks and the fires that might result are invisible. Unless you walk into a hydrogen flame, sometimes the only way to know there’s a leak is poor performance.

Canister trucks ($250,000 each) can carry enough fuel for 60 cars (3, 13). These trucks weight 40,000 kg but deliver only 400 kg of hydrogen. For a delivery distance of 150 miles, the delivery energy used is nearly 20% of the usable energy in the hydrogen delivered. At 300 miles 40%. The same size truck carrying gasoline delivers 10,000 gallons of fuel, enough to fill about 800 cars (3).
end quotes

Ammonia seems to be the better fit for a gasoline replacement
memagazine.org/contents/current/webonly/webex710.html

Seawater is a sink for ammonia and can be extracted from seawater. Great! we have the solution…or do we? In terms of energy (name removed by moderator)ut/output how effective is it? IOW put a tanker ship in the ocean designed to extract ammonia from seawater, the ship’s engine runs on ammonia, and uses ammonia extracted from the water to run its own engine. Problem/question: if the quantity of ammonia used to run the ship’s engine is equal to the quantity extracted what’s the point? There would be nothing left over to bring back to the market to run cars on. IOW you must have a net postive extraction of something greater than 1 to 1. Oilwells used to average 100 to 1. That is for every barrel of oil used to drill a well the field gave up 100 bbls.
 
drpmjhess said:
Oil shale and tar sand will take an enormous amount of energy to process. It seems that only nuclear-generated electricity to create the necessary steam will be sufficient to extract that oil on a scale to replace what will soon be lost.
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I won’t argue the point, as I don’t doubt it. I guess, then, the environmental people have this one blocked on both ends; no mining to extract it-no nuclear power to get the oil out of it.

Making liquid fuel out of coal is a proven method, but I understand that’s an environmental “no can do” as well.

And, of course, drilling off the coasts of Florida, California and in the arctic for real, liquid petroleum are not allowed.

It doesn’t take too great an imagination to expect that any kind of really modern mass transit will dispossess a spotted owl or snail darter here and there, so that’s probably out.

One of the two things (abortion being the other, which was sufficient unto itself) that divorced me from the Democrat party was the image of Jimmy Carter sitting in the Oval Office in that silly sweater of his, telling us all that we were fated to freeze in the dark and just had to learn to like it. I honestly think sometimes that there is a contingent out there that lives on schadenfreude.
 
Ridgerunner said:
One of the two things (abortion being the other, which was sufficient unto itself) that divorced me from the Democrat party was the image of Jimmy Carter sitting in the Oval Office in that silly sweater of his, telling us all that we were fated to freeze in the dark and just had to learn to like it. I honestly think sometimes that there is a contingent out there that lives on schadenfreude.
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Jimmy Carter was the only president we’ve had who saw the reality we’re now facing. If only we’d listened to him instead of that !#$%*&! Reagan we might not now be staring right now down the barrel of the end of affordable oil. But I don’t belong to either party.
 
drpmjhess said:
Jimmy Carter was the only president we’ve had who saw the reality we’re now facing. If only we’d listened to him instead of that !#$%*&! Reagan we might not now be staring right now down the barrel of the end of affordable oil. But I don’t belong to either party.
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US Senate Committee Hearing on Peak Oil
  1. Senator Richard G. Lugar Opening Remarks
  2. James R. Schlesinger Testimony
  3. R. James Woolsey Testimony
  4. Question and Answer Session
See audio downloads for hearing:
globalpublicmedia.org/us_senate_committee_hearing_on_peak_oil
 
People aren’t going to switch to alternate sources and reduce their consumption until oil actually gets scarce. This will all work itself out. As oil demand increases and oil supply decreases, oil price will rise. As oil prices rise, it will become economical to switch to other sources of energy. We’ll use less energy and other forms. We won’t have to go back to Amish lifestyles, we’ll just be more careful how we use energy. Stop getting so excited. 😛
 
Neil_Anthony said:
People aren’t going to switch to alternate sources and reduce their consumption until oil actually gets scarce. This will all work itself out. As oil demand increases and oil supply decreases, oil price will rise. As oil prices rise, it will become economical to switch to other sources of energy. We’ll use less energy and other forms. We won’t have to go back to Amish lifestyles, we’ll just be more careful how we use energy. Stop getting so excited. 😛
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You just don’t get it, do you? Are you among the 99% of the population who had no idea what’s in store?

oilcrash.com/
This website reveals that within the next year or two (at best):
  • Oil extraction from wells will be physically unable to meet global demand (the evidence is from the oil industry itself).
  • Alternative energy sources like nuclear and natural gas will fall far short of compensating for expected shortages of oil. There is simply not enough time to convert over to them.
  • Massive disruptions to transportation and the economy are expected from about 2005-2007 onward as the global decline of petroleum begins.
Most significant effects:
  • Gradual, permanent cut-off of fuel for transport and for industrial machinery. Global trade will greatly decline.
  • Agriculture (massive food shortages) depends heavily on fertilizers and chemicals made from oil.
  • Shortages of 500,000 other goods made from oil.
  • Therefore, reduction of virtually all business and government activity. Very serious unemployment.
 
drpmjhess said:
You just don’t get it, do you? Are you among the 99% of the population who had no idea what’s in store?

oilcrash.com/
This website reveals that within the next year or two (at best):
  • Oil extraction from wells will be physically unable to meet global demand (the evidence is from the oil industry itself).
  • Alternative energy sources like nuclear and natural gas will fall far short of compensating for expected shortages of oil. There is simply not enough time to convert over to them.
  • Massive disruptions to transportation and the economy are expected from about 2005-2007 onward as the global decline of petroleum begins.
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Um, supply is always able to meet demand. This is the most basic economics. As supply is reduced or demand increases, prices go up. When prices go up, people use less, matching demand with supply.

From about 2005-2007 onward hmm? But 2007 will be over in 3 weeks and no sign of this yet. :rolleyes:

P.S. I just looked at the website… this is a joke right? 👍
 
Neil_Anthony said:
People aren’t going to switch to alternate sources and reduce their consumption until oil actually gets scarce. This will all work itself out. As oil demand increases and oil supply decreases, oil price will rise. As oil prices rise, it will become economical to switch to other sources of energy. We’ll use less energy and other forms. We won’t have to go back to Amish lifestyles, we’ll just be more careful how we use energy. Stop getting so excited. 😛
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On you first sentence I’m afraid you’re right. On the second you’re also right, this, reality, will work itself out. On the next sentence oil prices are rising (I’m making a good profit on paid for old produciton). But on the next statment…what do you mean by becoming economical to switch to other sources?

Economists likes to see economics in terms of $$$‘s, but is that actully valid? IOW “if the price of oil gets high enough we’ll just switch to coal to liquids.” Dollars/currency, however, only represent something else. What will happen is that households’ % of spending on energy/fuel will increase to the point that something else must be given up. That “given up” could very well be their surburban house due to auto fue (if you can even get the amount you want). Suburban housing could see an even bigger value collapse then you see right now in parts of the country.

Those of use who tried to drive in during the oil embargo and Iran/Iraq war of the '70 remember well the rashoning of having to buy gas (limited to 20 gal) on odd/even days. Al doesn’t like a command society but the government’s answer to those oil shortages was very much a command based system. What else happend? Stagflation. As oil prices went up while supplies stagnated the economy went into resession while the cost of goods went up weekly. The price for canned goods at the grocery were increased weekly. There are those who argue that oil is the real international currency driving economies. They see it in terms of EROI (energy return of energy investment). What you pay for this is irrelevant because what matters is having a net possitive EI over ER. The greater the net possitive ER the greater your economic development. Once ER = EI there is not only no point in (in the case of oil) drilling for more oil but your economy can’t grow no matter what you pay per barrel since the cost of EI also equals ER.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EROEI
holon.se/folke/kurs/logexp/eroi.shtml
Challenges for Renewable Energy Development Policies
 
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