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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

#131

Post by codecamper »

btilly wrote: post #55
shanemhansen wrote: post #4

I live in Utah and I can tell you exactly what happens when oil is no longer in demand. They offer numerous tax breaks per well to encourage exploration and increase production. I believe the term is "corporate welfare". One of the tax breaks has a stated goal of providing tax relief when oil prices are low. https://oilgas.ogm.utah.gov/pub/Publications/Lists/tax_incen... This is the same government attempting to roll…

I agree that this is a stupid policy, but there is some attempt at logic behind it. Oil production has the problem that increasing in oil production requires spending money that will only pay off if the price of oil remains high for several years. Cheap producers like Saudi Arabia know this, and so try to make the price fluctuate with enough lows to wipe out expensive oil producers, and enough highs to get rich thems…

Or politicians could catch a glimmer of the future & put some tax dollars towards:

* battery factories * electric car incentives * open source car sharing / planning services. (get rid of the 30% uber tax meanwhile steering people towards shared services) * carbon taxes

it's been said a million times, but may as well keep saying it.

it'll fix the problem for good. no more wars. less environmental destruction.

Cars would actually be cheaper this way, if you wanted to bother owning one. way less maintenance. car pretty much lasts forever, just swap out the battery pack now & then.

Re: When oil is no longer in demand

#132

Post by ArkyBeagle »

NotSammyHagar wrote: post #97
edblarney wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

" like groundwater pollution, earthquakes, above ground pipelines, etc" Groundwater pollution and earthquakes are rare, and the latter are minor and have negligible impact. It's no more problematic than most other extraction industries. 'Above ground pipelines' are completely benign entities with almost zero environmental impact. Leaks are rare enough, and most of them are very minor and easy to clean up. Oil is an o…

It used to be that earthquakes were rare, but they aren't now, in places with fraking, such as Oklahoma and Dallas (!).

That injections wells ( not fracking - although they are related, hydrocarbon extraction activities ) cause earthquakes is still in the hypothesis phase.

Re: When oil is no longer in demand

#133

Post by melling »

dx034 wrote: post #122
melling wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, it's crazy that people think oil is going away. We're 7 billion people on our way to 9 billion, with another billion in the next 15 years. That fossil free future that we dream about isn't getting any closer. Those big solar plants, etc that we read about are a rounding error.

Added population will be mostly in poor areas where power consumption is very low. Energy demand will likely be driven by US, China and India in the next decade(s), the process there is important and very positive. Have a look at Gansu Wind Farm in China. [1] They build so many wind turbines there that they had to restrict production until they've finished the corresponding amount of high-voltage cables connecting it…

India and China have 1/3 of the world population. The US is less than 5% so it doesn't matter, except we use 20% of the oil. China is already the largest car market and India is rising. China gets over 70% of its electricity from coal.

That's great that China is developing solar and wind. Hopefully, it breaks into the double digits in 10 years. We have a long way to go, and we're on a clock.

Re: When oil is no longer in demand

#134

Post by ArkyBeagle »

FullMtlAlcoholc wrote: post #88
edblarney wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It requires "barrels-per-minute for hours" amounts of water. 100 BPM is unusually high for fracking. One acre-foot is about 7753 barrels.

The problem is that water is increasingly scarce in many parts where fracking is done for reasons outlined in the book "Cadillac Desert".

Re: When oil is no longer in demand

#135

Post by melling »

tachyonbeam wrote: post #70
melling wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, it's crazy that people think oil is going away. We're 7 billion people on our way to 9 billion, with another billion in the next 15 years. That fossil free future that we dream about isn't getting any closer. Those big solar plants, etc that we read about are a rounding error.

China installed 20GW of solar in the first half of 2016. They are moving fast.

What does 20GW means? If they install 40GW for the next 10 years, is that enough? That's about 1 nuclear power plant:

https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=104&t=3

Re: When oil is no longer in demand

#136

Post by ArkyBeagle »

Symbiote wrote: post #98
pixl97 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My friend lived in house with an oil well in the back yard. Really wasn't noticeable after you got used to the noise it made. After a week I forgot it was there.

Doesn't it stink? I remember very clearly the first time I visited western Texas (from Europe) as a child. The smell was sickening.

Generally it is refineries that stink.

Re: When oil is no longer in demand

#137

Post by ArkyBeagle »

handedness wrote: post #86
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 eff…

I just finished a (realtime systems programming) job at an oil services company. I wouldn't expect a lot of progress in shale tech, especially at present natural gas and oil prices.

The oil industry in general has a very skewed vision of what "technology" means. It tends to mean PLC programming, and PLCs are a really weird, small market. It tends to mean systems integration of a rather crude order.

Re: When oil is no longer in demand

#138

Post by baldfat »

shanemhansen wrote: post #4

I live in Utah and I can tell you exactly what happens when oil is no longer in demand. They offer numerous tax breaks per well to encourage exploration and increase production. I believe the term is "corporate welfare". One of the tax breaks has a stated goal of providing tax relief when oil prices are low. https://oilgas.ogm.utah.gov/pub/Publications/Lists/tax_incen... This is the same government attempting to roll…

Pennsylvania has tax free fracking because it provides high paying jobs. We are the only state that provides tax free fracking and it blows my mind. Texas and other strong Republican states take taxes from oil production but in PA nothing.

The "Pro-Fracking" groups says that PA had 250,000 jobs but it ended up including This number captured everyone in those industries including every road construction worker, trucker, engineer, and steel worker in Pennsylvania.

The number is actually around 20,000 and the state makes no tax money from the production and only from income tax.

Re: When oil is no longer in demand

#139

Post by nateburke »

As long as we have ground wars, we'll have demand for oil (i.e. gasoline). As an energy source, stored gasoline is far more modular and transportable than anything requiring the electric grid. Consequently, it is easier to defend and remains the ideal energy solution for supply lines in battle.

As long as we have air wars, we'll also have demand for oil. The logistics of moving an airforce around the world require floating airfields doubling as standalone fueling stations. How efficient would solar need to be for an aircraft carrier + all of its planes to run on solar?

As long as we have wars fought on the open seas... you get the idea. Oil, as a power source, moves quite easily and this cannot be ignored, strategically.

Militaries and governments know this. As long as we have physical borders that need to be defended, we'll have a demand for oil.

Re: When oil is no longer in demand

#140

Post by toyg »

nateburke wrote: post #139

As long as we have ground wars, we'll have demand for oil (i.e. gasoline). As an energy source, stored gasoline is far more modular and transportable than anything requiring the electric grid. Consequently, it is easier to defend and remains the ideal energy solution for supply lines in battle. As long as we have air wars, we'll also have demand for oil. The logistics of moving an airforce around the world require fl…

Purely military purposes would need relatively low volumes, though. Even just decoupling consumer demand from military demand would dramatically alter the economies of oil production. It might not fix all oil-related wars and restructure all Middle-Eastern alliances, but it would certainly change the landscape.
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