81–90 of 132 posts
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It may not be fast, but wind power is a proven technology for that application.
It’s also not as economical. If your competitor uses shipping that’s weeks faster and more reliable, then you’re not staying in business long.
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Natural gas is an alternative to oil for long distance transportation, although both are still fossil fuels. Progress is being made on algae biofuels. If electricity gets cheap enough it can be used to make synthetic hydrocarbon liquid fuels.
But again, if electricity is cheap enough, why not electric trains like we do in Europe? Or hydrogen if you need some energy storage on board? See http://www.imeche.org/news/news-article/could-hydrogen-train... I bet that this would be much better for the environment than algae.
While electrification of the US freight rail network certainly may happen, you have to remember the US is twice as large as the EU (9.1M sq km vs 4.5M sq km) and only a quarter the population density (33 vs 117 per sq km). Long distance passenger train routes don't really make sense (electrified or not, very few people want to spend 2 days on the train when a flight is 4 hours), meaning rail in the US is almost entirely freight.
Fracked wells have awful production curves. It will be done a few years after they run out of permian to drill. No gentle dropoffs like traditional reservoirs. Though, I'm just an interested bystander, so if any petroleum geologist know of changes that contradict I'm happy to be corrected.
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We have spent a non-insignificant amount on the Fifth Fleet (25 navy vessels) to ensure the stable supply of middle eastern oil onto energy markets. That seems to be of substantial incentive to mitigate our need for oil to drive our economy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Fifth_Fleet > Well, even a blind pig finds an acorn once in awhile. While working on a recent piece on how to cut $1 trillion from the…
Much of keeping gulf oil flowing is to keep the European and east Asian economies stable —they are petroleum poor. We get most of out foreign petros from Canada, Vz and Mx. No doubt Trump would love to recall rhe fleet, if possible, but it’s not. Unless he’d like to see chaos in the world economy.
Like trade wars usually tend to cause?
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> Intelligence sharing, mutual distaste for Iran, strategically placed ally, arms deals. It's the snake that bites its own tail, because these all go back to oil. About the alleged common "distaste for Iran", for instance: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nationalization_of_the_Iranian...
I think that's an oversimplification of current affairs. It's complicated. Iran wants to spread its sect of Islam, and that is at odds with a lot of the Arab world. Iran also hates Israel much more than Saudi Arabia does, and that comes into play. The Middle East is also important because of radical Islam (you can debate the role of Saudi Arabia in 9/11 and whatnot but I don't see that being about oil). I don't see h…
>Iran wants to spread its sect of Islam, and that is at odds with a lot of the Arab world
That had nothing to do with the US.
>I don't see how the coup in 1953 means that we don't have a distaste for Iran today
I understand that the Iranian Revolution is an obvious reaction to the 1953 coup, which made the two nations distaste one another for a gooood time. Without oil, no coup. Without the coup, one less big reason for Iranians to put Islamist to power and chant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_to_America
All these things became complicated because of oil. Switching to renewables would slowly but surely simplify all of this.
Fracked wells have awful production curves. It will be done a few years after they run out of permian to drill. No gentle dropoffs like traditional reservoirs. Though, I'm just an interested bystander, so if any petroleum geologist know of changes that contradict I'm happy to be corrected.
Why so gloomy? Something like 6-8 billion barrels in the Permian, we're talking at least 15-20 years out before it's even remotely an issue. Lot more short term and medium them effects to consider before optimizing frack jobs.
From https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-08-08/shale-exp...
>Here is the free cash flow after capital expenditure for a sample of 33 E&P companies, grouped by their main shale basin (all figures compiled by Bloomberg).
>It doesn't require the closest examination of that chart to see fracking is very capital intensive, with E&P firms spending way beyond their means even in the relatively halcyon days of 2012 and 2013. The 14 Permian-exposed companies in that sample saw their cash burn accelerate over the past 12 months to a collective $11.5 billion.
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Much of keeping gulf oil flowing is to keep the European and east Asian economies stable —they are petroleum poor. We get most of out foreign petros from Canada, Vz and Mx. No doubt Trump would love to recall rhe fleet, if possible, but it’s not. Unless he’d like to see chaos in the world economy.
> Unless he’d like to see chaos in the world economy. Like trade wars usually tend to cause?
Less dependency on foreign oil is good for peace since the US will not be "protecting their interests". And Saudi Arabia having less budget for their wars is also a good thing.
The US will always seek to control Middle East oil, it’s a huge lever on the rest of the world.
In the meantime, China is building a global supply chain to provide with world with solar panels and batteries. And bankrupt all the US companies/banks that keep investing in fossil fuels. It's all about your investment horizon I guess.
But what's going to happen is we'll frack everywhere, destabilize our bedrock and pollute our water, and still encounter a Hubbert peak in roughly the time it's taken us to ramp up domestic production (probably sometime around 2040). There's no way to predict an exact date for this though.
Then since Venezuela, the Middle East, Russia, the Baltic states, Canada, etc have more oil than anyone, we'll be at their mercy again:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_proven_oi...
The best thing we could do from a scientific/environmental/human rights standpoint is to stop using petroleum for fuel and only use it for manufacturing and as a bridge to renewable energy. This is unprofitable^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H unrealistic so we'll burn it all until externalities can no longer be ignored and the overall prices matches solar. This happened sometime between 2000 and 2010, but it will take a generation for the the general public to notice.
In the meantime I'm a typical hypocrite with an 80s Toyota truck like the one in Back to the Future that gets 15 mpg. YMMV.
