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When oil is no longer in demand

economist.com

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Re: When oil is no longer in demand

#81

Post by hx87 »

peterjlee wrote: post #16
joshaidan wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or would it potentially increase the supply of Jet A (jet fuel), as less oil needs to be converted to automobile fuel.

Is the refining process flexible enough to do that? I was under the impression that refining is more of a separation process so the amount of each petroleum product you get is already determined by the petroleum you have before you even start the process.

You can crack the fuel to go from heavier to lighter grade, and use Fischer-Tropsch process to go the other way.

Re: When oil is no longer in demand

#82

Post by 205guy »

tanderson92 wrote: post #63
205guy wrote: post #62

Interesting that the Economist is looking at a future where oil demand is lower, but that realization hasn't hit the public yet, at least not in the US. I have been thinking about the Standing Rock protests in North Dakota, and they are objecting to the environmental risk of pipelines. But in the big picture, oil is getting more expensive to extract, more dangerous to ship, and contributes to global warming then used…

So? It's still an environmental risk to their community at the present time. Oil's days being numbered must be cold comfort to them.

"Cold comfort" indeed in a North Dakota blizzard. But I'm in no way criticizing the standing rock protests, what I'm saying is that it's representative of things to come. When more people realize we can live exactly the same without gasoline pollution in all its forms (fracking water injection, leaking pipelines, leaking tanks at gas stations, air pollution and greenhouse gasses), it will seem like a no brainer.

Re: When oil is no longer in demand

#84

Post by Neeek »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #35
labster wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In California and other deserts, excess solar can be directed to desalination plants. Our water and energy shortages are essentially the same issue; solving one goes a long way to solving the other.

All resource problems are energy problems. With enough clean energy, you can make fuel, water, fertilizer, anything. We're going to need a lot of surplus energy to sequester all of the CO2 we've pumped into the atmosphere over the last 100+ years.

The weird part about sequestering is that if it's really going to work, people will need incentive to simply put all that energy in to the ground with no immediate benefit for them. You either need heavy government regulation or for everyone involved to be thinking about the larger picture.

I wonder if anti aging technology would push people to start seeing climate problems in its larger context.

Re: When oil is no longer in demand

#85

Post by PhantomGremlin »

stoic wrote: post #14

The recent market conditions are more a consequence of changes in supply than in demand. I heard someone refer to something called the "Economist effect", where an article in the Economist about a particular trend signals its end. Sure enough: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-11-30/opec-said... e: word order

the "Economist effect"

It's real. Someone on HN mentioned them as a contra-indicator during a previous discussion. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12516078

My supporting argument to him was that The Economist argued in 1999 that $10 oil was too expensive and that it could be headed to $5. So of course oil rose to $140 over the next decade! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12517258

Re: When oil is no longer in demand

#86

Post by handedness »

205guy wrote: post #62

Interesting that the Economist is looking at a future where oil demand is lower, but that realization hasn't hit the public yet, at least not in the US. I have been thinking about the Standing Rock protests in North Dakota, and they are objecting to the environmental risk of pipelines. But in the big picture, oil is getting more expensive to extract, more dangerous to ship, and contributes to global warming then used…

> But in the big picture, oil is getting more expensive to extract, more dangerous to ship, and contributes to global warming then used.

These assertions don't match the reality of what's happening.

The cost to extract oil has plummeted, and that's reshaping the world order. It's destroyed Russia's entire financial plan.

In the US it's become far safer to ship. US domestic production has increased to the point of effective independence, and the US no longer depends on the Strait of Hormuz for its energy supply. Oil's vastly easier to move than natural gas. Current natural gas production exists as a byproduct of shale oil production.

It's also becoming far cleaner to extract. The progress shale has made in just a few years is astounding. The extraction methods used today are orders of magnitude cleaner than the ones used just a few years ago.

Known domestic supplies are also increasing exponentially, which means the industry is highly unlikely to be "reduced to almost nothing" any time soon. The cheapest form of energy always wins, and even incentives and penalties can only somewhat mitigate that.

Sure, we'll have self-driving electric cards on the roads soon enough, but most of that energy isn't going to come from nuclear power, solar, or wind sources.

This landscape is changing quickly, and a lot of assumptions people hold–assumptions that are based on many decades of reality–aren't true.

Here's a lecture that's relatively current (though 9 months is nearly stale given how quickly shale tech is progressing), and does a decent job of outlining the situation:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pyfVTBI4dgA

Re: When oil is no longer in demand

#87

Post by handedness »

throwaway5752 wrote: post #56
izend wrote: post #3

Total World Consumption (2017 projection) : 96.92 million barrels per day (up from 92.58 million barrels in 2014) EIA outlook: http://www.eia.gov/outlooks/ieo/world.cfm Oil will be in demand for a long time. The demand might peak but headlines like this seem to indicate oil isn't needed anymore. Most people do not realize that 6-7 million barrels of oil per day must be found year over year to replenish the depletion…

And plastics.

Notice how food storage boxes changed considerably in the last few years? It's because they're derived from shale byproducts that are essentially free, if not cost-negative.

There's an irony in that we have an overabundance of natural gas due to shale, but oil itself is becoming far less important to the plastics industry than ever before.

Related viewing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pyfVTBI4dgA

Re: When oil is no longer in demand

#88

Post by FullMtlAlcoholc »

edblarney wrote: post #31
graeme wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's particularly perverse, however, to give tax breaks for an industry that has immense negative externalities.

Oil companies don't emit a whole lot of CO2. You emit the CO2 when you use your car (almost 50% of CO2 emissions are from autos). And a bunch of other industries are responsible for most of the rest of CO2 emissions.

Fracking requires an immense amount of water.

Re: When oil is no longer in demand

#89

Post by toomuchtodo »

Neeek wrote: post #84
toomuchtodo wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All resource problems are energy problems. With enough clean energy, you can make fuel, water, fertilizer, anything. We're going to need a lot of surplus energy to sequester all of the CO2 we've pumped into the atmosphere over the last 100+ years.

The weird part about sequestering is that if it's really going to work, people will need incentive to simply put all that energy in to the ground with no immediate benefit for them. You either need heavy government regulation or for everyone involved to be thinking about the larger picture. I wonder if anti aging technology would push people to start seeing climate problems in its larger context.

Carbon tax funds sequestering operations.

Something like this: https://www.terrapass.com/climate-change/carbon-offsets-expl...

Re: When oil is no longer in demand

#90

Post by AnthonyMouse »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #35
labster wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In California and other deserts, excess solar can be directed to desalination plants. Our water and energy shortages are essentially the same issue; solving one goes a long way to solving the other.

All resource problems are energy problems. With enough clean energy, you can make fuel, water, fertilizer, anything. We're going to need a lot of surplus energy to sequester all of the CO2 we've pumped into the atmosphere over the last 100+ years.

> We're going to need a lot of surplus energy to sequester all of the CO2 we've pumped into the atmosphere over the last 100+ years.

There is no point at which sequestering CO2 by use of electricity is going to make sense. Until the day that we burn zero CO2 whatsoever, you're better off using the electricity as electricity and thereby burning less carbon than burning it and then trying to get it back.

And even at that point, we already have a thing that converts sunlight and CO2 into solid form. Plants.

In theory what you could probably do is cultivate algae in the ocean and then scoop it up in a net, bury it in the ground and repeat. But the scale needed to make a dent is harrowing.

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