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Oil soars 6 percent as OPEC reaches deal to limit output in November

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Re: Oil soars 6 percent as OPEC reaches deal to limit output in November

#31
post #19

Is it possible that oil prices will never be that high again due to renewables? Part of me feels like the games OPEC members are playing will be to their long term detriment. Renewable cost is only going down year after year, really the oil states have a limited time to extract as much money as possible before alt energy kicks into high gear. By the time they're done fighting with each other it may be too late to get…

Renewables depend on oil. You can't make renewables with renewables energy, because their overall EROI is insufficient to both maintain the current standard of life, and make them. The other issue is mobility, oil has the best volume/energy content ratio of all energy sources we know (except uranium). Renewables can only make electricity and you need about 10x the same battery volume (and weight) to move a vehicle, c…

Renewables depend on oil. You can't make renewables with renewables energy, because their overall EROI is insufficient to both maintain the current standard of life, and make them.

Currently, sure, but in the long term? How so?

The other issue is mobility, oil has the best volume/energy content ratio of all energy sources we know (except uranium).

"Sustainable fuel for the transportation sector": https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1821126/

Re: Oil soars 6 percent as OPEC reaches deal to limit output in November

#33
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Renewables depend on oil. You can't make renewables with renewables energy, because their overall EROI is insufficient to both maintain the current standard of life, and make them. The other issue is mobility, oil has the best volume/energy content ratio of all energy sources we know (except uranium). Renewables can only make electricity and you need about 10x the same battery volume (and weight) to move a vehicle, c…

> Renewables can only make electricity If renewable energy becomes abundant/cheap enough, you can convert electricity into hydrogen or other high energy density chemicals.

Hydrogen is a nightmare to work with, and store. Other high energy-density chemicals tend to be complex hydrocarbons... So you're still burning oil - it just happens to be made from coal, or algae slush, or whatnot.

Re: Oil soars 6 percent as OPEC reaches deal to limit output in November

#34
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By the time electric cars are ready for ubiquity, transportation-as-a-utility will have exploded thanks to autonomous vehicles. Why buy an electric car with less maintenance than a gas one when you can just skip out on owning a car entirely? Governments and/or insurance can directly or indirectly subsidize this move for the sake of safety.

Why would insurance companies do this? They stand to lose a TON by autonomous vehicles. Estimates are in the 60 to 80% of the market to go away.

Risk versus technological change is a dynamical system, yet many of the sky-is-falling estimates for the insurance industry myopically forecast assuming an invariant risk set-point.

For an alternate perspective of a potential (lucrative) future for insurance, see my post here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12245312

Re: Oil soars 6 percent as OPEC reaches deal to limit output in November

#35
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oil is not a big part of electricity generation in most places.

Major energy sources and percent share of total U.S. electricity generation in 2015 Coal = 33% Natural gas = 33% Nuclear = 20% Hydropower = 6% Other renewables = 7% Biomass = 1.6% Geothermal = 0.4% Solar = 0.6% Wind = 4.7% Petroleum = 1% Other gases = An electric fleet (powered by coal, natural gas, and nuclear) will reduce demand for oil, so movement in that direction is likely cause falling oil prices. Which could…

Russia, Saudi Arabia, USA, and many of the oil producers also produce natural gas. Oils can also be refined into natural gas. So countries who produce oil are not always dependent on it as their only energy export.

Re: Oil soars 6 percent as OPEC reaches deal to limit output in November

#36

Is it possible that oil prices will never be that high again due to renewables? Part of me feels like the games OPEC members are playing will be to their long term detriment. Renewable cost is only going down year after year, really the oil states have a limited time to extract as much money as possible before alt energy kicks into high gear. By the time they're done fighting with each other it may be too late to get…

There are a couple of dynamics at play. In the long term (10+ year range), I believe you are correct, that renewables will begin to have a significant effect on oil prices as natural gas power plants are shut down and replaced with solar and wind (oil is used primarily for transportation, not energy production; natural gas is replacing coal as the primary fossil fuel used for generating electricity as natural gas prices remain lower than coal for extended periods). For the short term, though, I think fracking has a bigger impact on prices.

Traditionally, oil prices had a long-term boom-bust cycle that lasted about 30 years...15 years of boom followed by 15 years of bust. This has been going on since the dawn of the oil industry, and is largely systemic: business cycles tend to be around 15 years, as in it takes about 10-15 years to go from discovery to production (gather data, drill exploration wells, drill production wells and production infrastructure). I'm not sure of any other industry with so long of a systemic business cycle.

Now, however, fracking has changed the game. So far, since "tight gas" is so new, we're able to use fracking in oil fields that have already been developed, to extract gas and oil from areas we knew it was at before, but thought it was too hard to extract (the term for where fracking is used--"tight" refers to the permeability of the rock...traditional oil comes from sources measured in the 10s of darcies...fracking is often employed in areas with With the old business cycle, new technology typically would be invented any time prices got high enough--generally following a business cycle where all of the "easy" oil has been found and extracted. New technology allows new fields to be produced "easily", causing a surplus of oil and a crash in oil prices. This continues until all the "easy" oil has been found, and the cycle continues. This cycle goes all the way back to the 1860s (whale blubber -> oil wells -> oil wells with pumps -> basic geology (drilling under hills) -> 2D seismic -> 3D seismic -> deep-sea/sub-salt -> fracking; pretty much follows a 20-30 year cycle). The concept of "peak oil" isn't new--people have been worried about peak oil since the mid-1800s.

Analysts aren't sure if the new reality we're in has fundamentally changed the markets. I say it hasn't--the cycles will return after all of this new "easy" oil, in the form of shale gas/tight gas, has been exploited. But we're only somewhere about 2-5 years into a 15-year bust cycle, if you ask me. I would expect prices to hover in the $40-$50 range for the remainder of this bust cycle, with a few rare exceptions (wars, disasters, etc). After that, I think you'll see prices return to the $100+ level (in 2016 terms--since the 1860s, prices have cycled pretty consistently between $10 and $100 for a barrel of oil, in 2016 terms) until the next technological revolution in oil exploration and production occurs. But it does mean less volatility in prices as business cycles shorten--at least for the remainder of this bust cycle. Maybe peak oil will become a reality right as demand for oil drops, making the next round of technology advances unnecessary.

Re: Oil soars 6 percent as OPEC reaches deal to limit output in November

#37
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "...love to see the price of oil rise so they can expand their production of oil that's more expensive to produce" Yeah, it's a weird dynamic. For example, the higher the price of oil, the less dependent the US is on the rest of the world. Lots of oil in that $60-$80+ range in and around the US.

The 60-80$ range US Oil only lasts for a few years at US consumption rates, but that's plenty to influence OPEC. The real issue is Expensive Oil has a lot of competition but Cheap Oil does not. Further, it takes years for substitutes to get onto the market. So, OPEC is better off with large price swings than a steady state which causes long term demand to fall off a cliff or uses up their supply at very low prices. O…

But you can't exclude the natural gas that's also part of fracking. The reserves of it in the US are incredible, and have a large impact on energy prices.

Re: Oil soars 6 percent as OPEC reaches deal to limit output in November

#38
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "...love to see the price of oil rise so they can expand their production of oil that's more expensive to produce" Yeah, it's a weird dynamic. For example, the higher the price of oil, the less dependent the US is on the rest of the world. Lots of oil in that $60-$80+ range in and around the US.

The 60-80$ range US Oil only lasts for a few years at US consumption rates, but that's plenty to influence OPEC. The real issue is Expensive Oil has a lot of competition but Cheap Oil does not. Further, it takes years for substitutes to get onto the market. So, OPEC is better off with large price swings than a steady state which causes long term demand to fall off a cliff or uses up their supply at very low prices. O…

But you can't exclude the natural gas that's also part of fracking. The reserves of it in the US are incredible, and have a large impact on energy prices.

Re: Oil soars 6 percent as OPEC reaches deal to limit output in November

#39
post #37
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 60-80$ range US Oil only lasts for a few years at US consumption rates, but that's plenty to influence OPEC. The real issue is Expensive Oil has a lot of competition but Cheap Oil does not. Further, it takes years for substitutes to get onto the market. So, OPEC is better off with large price swings than a steady state which causes long term demand to fall off a cliff or uses up their supply at very low prices. O…

But you can't exclude the natural gas that's also part of fracking. The reserves of it in the US are incredible, and have a large impact on energy prices.

Natural gas is often burnt off as not worth recovering in many places. It's valuable in the US largely due to low transportation costs, but on it's own is generally not worth it.
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