Petroleum and the future of civilization

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Catherine_S said:
**Cause and effect drpmjhess! Cause and effect!
If I buy a car but do not read the manuel I receive on the day of my purchase because I labour under the illusion that if I can drive a car I know **all about cars **than the consequences belong to me and me alone. The **Maker **of the car is in no way involved in what has happened. I can learn from my mistake ( if I live 🙂 ) but the consequences of my decision belong to me.
*I still do not believe that over population will ever be a problem. *
In terms of Petroleum it needs to go for many reasons. **The sooner the better. There are great and creative minds out there (God’s Providence 😉 again) who can **and **will make this happen. **
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Al_Masetti said:
Doug is also wrong.
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Doug is quite right. You simply don’t comprehend the implications of the massive shortage of liquid fuels facing the industrialized world. You offer no evidence of how this shortfall will be made up, beyond “God will provide.” Pious and good for the soul, but not helpful in the practical order of things! Piety alone doesn’t fill fuel tanks.
 
drpmjhess said:
Doug is quite right. You simply don’t comprehend the implications of the massive shortage of liquid fuels facing the industrialized world. You offer no evidence of how this shortfall will be made up, beyond “God will provide.” Pious and good for the soul, but not helpful in the practical order of things! Piety alone doesn’t fill fuel tanks.
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Ya know, I hereby go on record as protesting the repetitive mischaracterization and misquoting of my posts on this thread.

So, let’s go through this again:

Petroleum that comes out of the ground is not the only liquid available for use as transport fuel.

First of all, petroleum cannot be used as a liquid fuel unless it is refined first. It must go through a very complex and expensive industrial/chemical process involving catalysts and other sophisticated chemical engineering … [that we refer to as a “refinery”].

Secondly, both Germany and South Africa used a chemical process that just about replaced petroleum for production of liquid fuels. Fischer-Tropsch is one commonly used process. It uses solid coal to make liquid alcohol. [There are many different “kinds” of alcohol … ethanol is one … often made from corn or sugar. Methanol is another … but methanol can be made from almost anything including wood chips, garbage, natural gas, coal, etc.] There are many alcohols.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcohol

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fischer-Tropsch_process

and

www.sasol.com

These chemical processes are commonly known to students of high-school chemistry.

There is no reason why folks who understand biology, chemistry and physics cannot develop additional processes for conversion of commonly available materials into liquid fuels. Just keep in mind before doing this in your basement, … that this stuff is volatile, flammable and explosive. [Don’t do this at your home basement laboratory.]

Folks interested in all this application of technology to new processes, should read about Hall who converted aluminum from a precious metal into a common everyday household product. Aluminum is one of the most commonly available elements in the earth’s crust, yet until Hall came along it was locked up and unavailable.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hall-Héroult_process

Read also about the work of Tesla:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikola_Tesla

These are geniuses who devised fabulous economic progress through technology. They didn’t sit around and say that the world’s population must be reduced. They worked at applying their genius to solve problems facing humanity.

One wonders how many geniuses have been killed in the womb by abortion. Perhaps one of those killed babies might have come up with a new process for creating a liquid fuel from our earth’s crust using hydro power or solar or cosmic radiation.

AND … just in case someone gets the idea that we need abortion to eliminate undesireable unwanted deformed babies who grow up to be deformed adults who produce nothing, … read about the work of Charles Steinmetz:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Proteus_Steinmetz
 
Al, your’s is trust in the free market to respond to human needs on at timely bases.

As I’ve said before, Al, the current volume and demand for petroleum would fill a swimming pool 6.5’ deep x 82’ wide x 63,488miles long. And you think we can just simply replace this volume as it depletes with stuff like coal to liquids?

Take coal reserves and the annualized gowth in demand for it. Something you ignore when I present it to you: webpotential.com/ambiente/exponential_growth.htm
“An example of what exponential growth means in resources can be seen with US coal reserves. Coal is the US’s most abundant fossil fuel. In 1991 the US Department of Energy reported that at current rate of use US coal reserves could last almost 500 years. But the caveat here is current rate of use. Between 1971 and 1991 the use of coal grew 2.86%. With this rate of growth US coal could last about 94 years if we could use it all, but more likely 72 years of coal would be recoverable (Forgotten Fundamentals of the Energy Crisis).”

Here’s a table. In the first column 0% means steady consumption year over year. So to use an example: if you have 300 years of coal, how long will coal last if the comsumption grows at stead rate of 3%? Answer; 77 years.

Lifetimes of non-renewable resources for different rates of growth of consumption. Except for the left column, all numbers are lifetimes in years.

0 % 10 30 100 300 1000 3000 10,000

1 % 9.5 26 69 139 240 343 462

2 % 9.1 24 55 97 152 206 265

3 % 8.7 21 46 77 115 150 190

4 % 8.4 20 40 64 93 120 150

5 % 8.1 18 36 56 79 100 124

6 % 7.8 17 32 49 69 87 107

7 % 7.6 16 30 44 61 77 94

8 % 7.3 15 28 40 55 69 84

9 % 7.1 15 26 37 50 62 76

10 % 6.9 14 24 34 46 57 69

Now, Al, if we do as you say and begin using coal to liquids to drive cars, trucks, planes, and trains, in addition to generating electricity for our homes, what do you believe the annualized rate of coal consumption will be if it’s already 2.86% now?

Why the dip in oil in the 70-80’s. We stopped using oil to generate electricity. Only 3% of electricity is now generated from oil.

http://www.geo.umn.edu/courses/3005/usquad.GIF

At a 7% annual growth rate in demand, consumption doubles every 10 years. 7% was the annual growth rate of oil. If that rate would’ve continued It looks like this:

dbedt.hawaii.gov

Department of Business, Economic Development & Tourism

State of Hawaii
dbedt.hawaii.gov dbedt.hawaii.gov
 
And, Al, you keep trying to tally up new fields to say something of the effect: see there’s plenty of oil yet to come into the market.

Well what does the former head of Saudi ARAMCO have to say about the current oil situation?

energybulletin.net/36510.html

In a revealing interview with journalist David Strahan at this year’s Oil & Money Conference, former head of Saudi Arabian exploration & production Sadad Al-Husseini told the world that he now believes that the current level of world oil production will likely never be exceeded. Al-Husseini’s view coincides with that of T. Boone Pickens, who stated at ASPO-USA’s Houston conference that the world oil production peaked in 2006. The 85 million barrels per day of liquids available to the markets now is all we’re ever going to get if these oil industry veterans are correct.

With demand rising and supply flat, prices must rise. Accordingly, Al-Husseini believes that oil prices will rise by $12 per barrel per year from here on out, assuming a “base” price level of about $70 in 2007. The nominal price is now just above $92/barrel, so the difference must be due to the usual suspects cited by the mainstream media, including speculators, the weak dollar, rising Asian demand, resource nationalism, geopolitics in the Middle East, disruptions in Nigeria, and Iraq.

“[World] reserves are confused and in fact inflated. Many of the so called reserves are in fact resources. They’re not delineated, they’re not accessible, they’re not available for production”. By [Al-Husseini’s] estimate 300 billion of the world’s 1200 [billion] barrels of proved reserves should be recategorized as speculative resources.

You want to listen? Go here an page down to
“Listen to the interview with Sadad al-Huseini.”
davidstrahan.com/blog/?p=67

I coming to believe the reason none of this is talked about in the presidential elections is because politicians are worried most people beleive as you so they’re afraid to aknowledge the truth and scale of the problem.
 
Is it feasible to buy oil or gas in barrels and stockpile them in a shed for when it becomes scarce? You could fill a garage up with 1000 barrels of oil at $100 per barrel now, and you could be a millionaire in a few years?
 
Neil_Anthony said:
Is it feasible to buy oil or gas in barrels and stockpile them in a shed for when it becomes scarce? You could fill a garage up with 1000 barrels of oil at $100 per barrel now, and you could be a millionaire in a few years?
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At its lowest price In 1999 you could’ve bought a barrel of oil for $10. A typical tank (14.5 feet tall by 10 feet) holds 210 barrels. So the price for that tank of oil would’ve been $2,100. Eight to nine years later (2007) the price of that tank of oil would’ve been $21,000 when oil hit $100/bbl.
 
Doug50 said:
At its lowest price In 1999 you could’ve bought a barrel of oil for $10. A typical tank (14.5 feet tall by 10 feet) holds 210 barrels. So the price for that tank of oil would’ve been $2,100. Eight to nine years later (2007) the price of that tank of oil would’ve been $21,000 when oil hit $100/bbl.
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So how many tanks of oil do you keep in your shed? I wonder if it’s worth renting a storage area to keep oil in.
 
The basic premises of the “peak oilers” are faulty.

There is no point in “quibbling” about various and sundry growth rates as long as several basic factors are being totally ignored and as long as their basic premise is wrong:
  1. We do not know how much oil there is in the Earth’s crust. “Proven” oil reserves [oil that is economically and technologically recoverable] currently is estimated to be somewhere around 1 trillion barrels … enough for 35 years or thereabouts.
  2. There are an additional 2 trillion barrels of recoverable reserves that will probably meet the “proven” standard in a few years.
  3. In addition, there are huge reserves of “unconventional” oil such as ultra heavy crude, Canadian tar sands and U.S. shale oil, plus there are many areas of the planet that have as yet not been fully explored. The Club of Rome’s report: “Limits to Growth” report stated that as of 1972, all known oil reserves would be entirely consumed by 2003. So they say we totally ran dry … like … four years ago. Almost five years ago. Ummm… don’t look now, fellows, but …
    … it didn’t happen. We still have a lot of proven reserves.
To read more about the Club of Rome and their “oops!”, go here:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limits_to_Growth

[They “revised” their dire forecast a couple of years ago. What kind of “c**p” is that??? First, they scare the daylights out of everyone, and THEN when demonstrated to be wrong they issue a revision. They should hide in a deep coal mine for the rest of their lives and never show their faces again.]
  1. Today, only about 35% or so of the oil contained in known oil fields can be recovered today with existing techologies … up from 22% in 1980.
  2. There are many new oil fields that have been discovered but not explored; for example, places such as Saudi Arabia produce oil only from a few old fields, although they have discovered but not developed more than 50 new oil fields. Ditto, South China Sea and Kazakhstan. Saudi Arabia, for example, has proven reserves of somewhere around 300 billion barrels, but the suspected actual reserves are somewhere around 1 trillion barrels.
Unfortunately, Western oil companies only control about 10% of the reserves of crude oil. The other 90% is in the hands of unstable despotic regimes that delight in jerking our chain, raising prices, and demanding political concessions.

In the U.S., something like 15,000 exploration wells were drilled over a ten year period; whereas, in Saudi Arabia there were only 100 or thereabouts drilled.
  1. Some folks take violent exception to the R-U / abiogenic theory that disconnects oil creation from organic sources. If R-U proves out, then the amount of oil will be unlimited.
  2. The current issue regarding price of oil relates to the fact that the United States has created a bottleneck by having insufficient refinery capacity. ALL of that oil has to be refined before it can be used. The U.S. has a deficit of somewhere around 20% in capacity for refining gasoline. Inadequate crude oil refining capacity has limited the quantity of crude available to be refined; the high demand for refined product has created dislocations and shortages and driven up the prices.
  3. All of the comments I posted above about oil reserves and wells drilled apply more so to natural gas.
In summary, the Earth has lots of oil and gas; in addition, human innovation has the capability to convert coal, natural gas, and other substances to liquid fuel such as gasoline and methanol. I have previously provided some places to do some research.

Some folks delight in making claims about “infinite” growth and “exponential” growth. Well, in fact, if they are correct, then we started running out of oil the second day that we started pumping oil … more than 100 years ago.

We are limited only by the propagandists of scarcity who want us to limit our population.

I suggest that interested folks research writing on the topic by Walter E. Williams and Leonardo Maugeri.
 
Al_Masetti said:
  1. There are an additional 2 trillion barrels of recoverable reserves that will probably meet the “proven” standard in a few years.
  2. In addition, there are huge reserves of “unconventional” oil such as ultra heavy crude, Canadian tar sands and U.S. shale oil,.
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In your dreams!
 
drpmjhess said:
In your dreams!
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The simple fact is that the “experts” have demonstrably been proven UTTERLY, TOTALLY and COMPLETELY wrong on the available reserves of oil … from the beginning right up to the present day.

They have simply been wrong.

We’re not talking being off by 10% or off by a couple of months or a couple of years. We’re talking being off TOTALLY … like in the wrong direction.

Normally, people who are that wrong get fired and sent to work in some field where they can’t do too much damage. Maybe breaking big rocks into little rocks with very small hammers.

About the only field of endeavor in which consistent failure is rewarded would be … economics. With probably the greatest rewards coming in the specific field of petroleum economics.

[Ya know … you all have still not replied with details on how and why all of the forecasts of available petroleum have been so totally wrong. I did ask that question a few times. But you all have studiously ignored that question.]

Even the Club of Rome which was embarrassingly wrong … the headline making report that had us bone dry by 2004 … remember that one … has avoided an answer.

Would you care to give it a try???

So, I will repeat: why were ALL, repeat, ALL of the earlier forecasts so totally wrong?

Hmmmmm???
 
Neil_Anthony said:
So how many tanks of oil do you keep in your shed? I wonder if it’s worth renting a storage area to keep oil in.
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We don’t sit on tanks. You still have to pay for operations, investors want their checks, etc. Besides it’d be cheaper just to cut back on pumping a well.
 
Hey, Al
US car giant prepares world for life without oil
abc.net.au/news/video/2008/01/17/2141037.htm

page down to listent to Dr Al-Husseini on Saudi oilfield and world production. Bet you won’t. Husseini has a good of command of english and is Harvard educated. Why would you know more about ARAMCO’s and OPEC’s production capability then him? My choice is trust your opinion or experts like him, other oilfield experts, and my own experience to ah YOU.

davidstrahan.com/blog/?p=67

Here’s Saudi’s oilfields
http://cache.eb.com/eb/image?id=674&rendTypeId=4

Here’s how oil is formed: abc.net.au/science/crude/
The very fact that you want to believe in abiogenic petroleum saving the world discredits you. Abiogenic petroleum origin

You’re a dreamer, Al.
 
Doug50 said:
We don’t sit on tanks. You still have to pay for operations, investors want their checks, etc. Besides it’d be cheaper just to cut back on pumping a well.
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I meant just for your personal use. I’m thinking of stockpiling some gas in a storage locker after reading this thread. When civilization collapses I’ll still be able to drive.
 
Doug50 said:
Al,
Wall Street Journal; Market Watch
Study Shows Oil Production Down
“The heart of the debate”
marketwatch.com/tvradio/bcPlayer.asp?bcpid=203719194&bclid=86272812&bctid=1379245336

To paraphrase: Allowing for decline the world by 2017 will have to add about 55 million bbls per day to keep even and then the addtion demaned production to 112 million bbl/day. It’s the equivolent of adding 9 Saudi Arabias over the next 10 years.
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Let the record show that you have declined to answer the question: why did all those previous pretentious prognosticators prevaricate?
 
Markey Introduces Legislation to Protect Polar Bear, Accuses Bush Admin. of Regulatory Lunacy
“Down one road lies the survival of the polar bear and the orderly consideration of oil drilling and global warming and common sense. Down the other road, too often traveled by this administration, lies regulatory lunacy and a blatant disregard for moral responsibility. I urge Secretary Kempthorne and his agency to choose the Bush administration’s road less traveled and protect the polar bear, and the rest of us, from global warming.”
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fyi, this left wing congressman marky from mass has a 100% approval rating from naral–he even voted against the partial birth abortion ban and supports all embryonic stem cell research!! but he has the nerve to say bush lacks moral responsibility. if this isn’t proof positive of how insane liberals are i don’t know what is.

by the way, according to the usgs, not known to be a pro industry organization, they calculate that oil and gas activities in the arctic will have an insignificant reduction in polar bear numbers, less than 3%. the biggest effect on polar bear population decrease is habitat change from global warming.
 
Funny.

Two of the least endangered species on the planet are polar bears and crocodiles/alligators.

Nothing to do with global warming or anything else.

The populations of both are exploding.
Dee_Dee_King said:
Markey Introduces Legislation to Protect Polar Bear, Accuses Bush Admin. of Regulatory Lunacyfyi, this left wing congressman marky from mass has a 100% approval rating from naral–he even voted against the partial birth abortion ban and supports all embryonic stem cell research!! but he has the nerve to say bush lacks moral responsibility. if this isn’t proof positive of how insane liberals are i don’t know what is.

by the way, according to the usgs, not known to be a pro industry organization, they calculate that oil and gas activities in the arctic will have an insignificant reduction in polar bear numbers, less than 3%. the biggest effect on polar bear population decrease is habitat change from global warming.
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