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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

#161

Post by josho »

edblarney wrote: post #17
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…

'Tax breaks' are offered to all sorts of industries. Almost all entertainment in Canada for example, is done nearly tax free. Pharma, energy, small business etc. etc..

The entertainment industry in Canada receives tax incentives to encourage sustaining and sharing Canadian heritage & values, which would otherwise be lost due to the media juggernaut to the south. It is not always successful, but that is the intent.

What is the motivation to give a highly profitable industry tax incentives?

Re: When oil is no longer in demand

#162

Post by josho »

ArkyBeagle wrote: post #132
NotSammyHagar wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There seems to be correlation. Causation is not yet proven.

In health and sciences that would be enough to prohibit certain activities. But when industry for the benefit of jobs, GDP, etc has its way it means continue as normal regardless of the warnings.

This is why we are nearing a climate crisis. I suppose it is a form of the tragedy of the commons.

Re: When oil is no longer in demand

#163

Post by thatcat »

edblarney wrote: post #47
thatcat wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if they don't use much, they tend to spill a lot which is worse than burning it.

"they tend to spill a lot which is worse than burning it." Both parts are not correct. First, they spill very little in the grand scheme of things. Second, an 'oil spill' unless it's quite large, is not a hugely damaging thing for the environment. Oil is a plentiful, organic material, found everywhere in nature. It's just not concentrated enough in most places to be extracted. The soil in northern Alberta (an area th…

I guess it's arguable whether it's worse or not, but CO2 doesn't typically kill any wildlife whereas oil spills do.

There is a certain percentage that is leaked from every pipeline in addition to the large leaks that occur during tanker and drilling accidents. Even a small percentage of the large volume they extract is a large volume to pour on the ground.

I'm not sure why you think the concentrations of oil in the soil occurring naturally approach even the smallest pipeline leak; would love to see some sources though if you have them.

Re: When oil is no longer in demand

#164

Post by thatcat »

cr1895 wrote: post #116
thatcat wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if they don't use much, they tend to spill a lot which is worse than burning it.

Crudely (haha) crunching some numbers, if we consider the oil spilled in the US in 2011 (incl. Deepwater Horizon) of 4.95e6 bbl compared to the total oil consumption in 2015 of 7.09e9 bbl, the oil spilled is less than 0.07% of the oil consumed. This, mind you, is considering a massive outlier year for spilled oil. In a more typical year it's an order of magnitude less. Not to minimize the damage from spilled oil or s…

4.95e6 bbl ( 41 L/bbl) = 203 million liters. Your only reference for scale can't be just net product, absolute numbers seem to more accurately approximate the scale of damage.

Do your numbers include pipeline and other small but continuous sources of loss?

Re: When oil is no longer in demand

#165

Post by stuartalex »

cr1895 wrote: post #118
stuartalex wrote: post #78

A web developer from Aberdeen here. The transition from wealthy to poor in Aberdeen has been instantaneous. Everyone I know in the city has been affected—my fiancee was made redundant, my Dad (after 25 years at BP) and my best mate’s dad (after 25 years at Shell) too. I studied CS at Robert Gordon University, which is cutting academic staff. I also worked at a design and dev shop, but that went bust in December last…

Have you noticed any pick-up from the offshore wind industry? There's certainly some overlap between oil and wind industries, and Scotland is doing quite a lot of offshore wind development nowadays.

Nah, unfortunately not.

Scotland in general is very well placed for renewable energy, with both great geography and skilled labour. I feel like the businesses based in Aberdeen haven’t realised that opportunity though.

The local industry has been a one-trick pony with no ambition to diversify. The end result is what we’re currently seeing.

Re: When oil is no longer in demand

#166

Post by hx87 »

mikeash wrote: post #146
hx87 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

87UL and 93UL aren't much more expensive than automotive gas, since it's pretty much the same thing. It's 100+ octane leaded gas that's expensive, and it'll stay that way until general aviation gets out of its carburetor & fixed timing rut and join the modern world of direct fuel injection and FADEC.

I didn't realize there was 87/93 avgas. What's the difference between that and what goes in cars?

Chemically, they're identical. They might be taxed differently though.

Re: When oil is no longer in demand

#167

Post by ArkyBeagle »

josho wrote: post #162
ArkyBeagle wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

There seems to be correlation. Causation is not yet proven. In health and sciences that would be enough to prohibit certain activities. But when industry for the benefit of jobs, GDP, etc has its way it means continue as normal regardless of the warnings. This is why we are nearing a climate crisis. I suppose it is a form of the tragedy of the commons.

The ready availability of hydrocarbons is a pretty significantly public good. Secondarily, the oil industry was one of the first ones regulated ( Sherman Act ) and when an industry is regulated, they get better and better at finding the edges to slip past over time.

"In health and sciences this would be enough to.." is a massive problem, IMO. If the full measure of tobacco law is brought to bear on "energy companies", you could pretty well wreck the US economy without meaning to.

Re: When oil is no longer in demand

#168

Post by Neeek »

philipkglass wrote: post #91
Neeek wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 sequestration doesn't necessarily mean driving combustion in reverse to get oxygen and hydrocarbons again. Accelerated silicate weathering could remove a lot more atmospheric CO2 per unit of energy invested and it generates carbonate minerals rather than fuel that people would be tempted to burn again. Like this, "Enhanced weathering strategies for stabilizing climate and averting ocean acidification": http://…

That's pretty cool! Non fuel forms of sequestered carbon hadn't occurred to me, though you would still need to fund the process. Using a carbon tax to fund it as a government function seem likes the obvious solution if it were to be implemented at scale.

Re: When oil is no longer in demand

#169

Post by infinite8s »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #104
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 th…

> 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 That day will come. And we'll then be at the point where its time to use cheap renewables to pull CO2 back out of the air and store it in a stable state where it can't be burned again.

My bet is some sort of synthetic bio-augmented photosynthesis process (if you think about it - that's exactly what plants do - sequester carbon dioxide in carbohydrates). If we are super lucky that process will also generate edible byproducts.

Re: When oil is no longer in demand

#170

Post by cr1895 »

thatcat wrote: post #164
cr1895 wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Crudely (haha) crunching some numbers, if we consider the oil spilled in the US in 2011 (incl. Deepwater Horizon) of 4.95e6 bbl compared to the total oil consumption in 2015 of 7.09e9 bbl, the oil spilled is less than 0.07% of the oil consumed. This, mind you, is considering a massive outlier year for spilled oil. In a more typical year it's an order of magnitude less. Not to minimize the damage from spilled oil or s…

4.95e6 bbl ( 41 L/bbl) = 203 million liters. Your only reference for scale can't be just net product, absolute numbers seem to more accurately approximate the scale of damage. Do your numbers include pipeline and other small but continuous sources of loss?

As I said, crude, so I just grabbed some numbers I found quickly to illustrate "a lot."

Here's where the 2010 (I notice a typo now in my original post, it's not 2011) comes from:

http://ops.fhwa.dot.gov/Freight/freight_analysis/nat_freight...

That includes spills from vessels, facilities, pipelines, and other unknown sources. Regardless, the spill due to Deepwater Horizon was so massive compared to more typical years.

Also, it's 786,987,110 liters (there are ~159 liters in an oil barrel).

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