Energy independent? Suuuure...
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-03-24/russia-oi...
The U.S. is now energy independent
101–110 of 135 posts
Re: The U.S. is now energy independent
#102Sigh. 1. A barrel of oil isn't just gas.. About half is for bunker oil, diesel and kerosene that runs boats, trucks and jets. That need isn't going away no matter how many batteries you make. The rest (40-50%) of the barrel is a waste stream that can be used as light gasoline, plastics and chemicals. We will always have the second half because we always need the first half. 2. As others have mentioned, all oil is not…
Are jet engines really that fussy with the fuel? Traditional gasoline Otto engines need high octane fuel because the fuel is injected before compression, so the gasoline should not spontaneously combust even at high compression rates.
Diesels are less strict since the fuel is only injected when it needs to immediately combust. But there are still knocking issues from combustion dynamics. Rudolf Diesel's first engine ran on peanut oil. Ships run on very heavy sulphur rich fuel oil. The range is wide.
But jets? It's a flow process, not back and forth. Historically they were very attractive partly because they were not at all fussy about the fuel they use... If gasoline was cheap, from first principles one could assume that jets would run just fine with it, with only few modifications.
Re: The U.S. is now energy independent
#103Sigh. 1. A barrel of oil isn't just gas.. About half is for bunker oil, diesel and kerosene that runs boats, trucks and jets. That need isn't going away no matter how many batteries you make. The rest (40-50%) of the barrel is a waste stream that can be used as light gasoline, plastics and chemicals. We will always have the second half because we always need the first half. 2. As others have mentioned, all oil is not…
Good points on the different oil weights.
> The energy price predicament is that below $80/barrel, shale and tight producers can't make money (and there will be no further investment) and above $80 and the rest of the economy gets killed.
Your numbers here are way off. US shale production costs have improved and are now around $37/bbl (source: Bloomberg, yesterday).
> "above $80 and the rest of the economy gets killed"
You really need to provide sources on claims like this.
Re: The U.S. is now energy independent
#104Earlier quoted context omitted.
Regarding bunker oil, there are ships under construction that will use hydrogen instead of bunker oil. Also interesting is that while large ships burn bunker oil, they do so to power a generator that powers an electrical engine. This is true for modern oil tankers and large container ships. So, it's not that inevitable that ships will continue to use bunker oil forever. Also, there is a company in the US already sell…
> The challenge with oil is not so much the price but the fact that it keeps changing wildly unpredictably and that these swings seem to be getting more common. Those wilds swings are very damaging to industries that depend on those prices either being high (like shale oil) or low (any company that buys oil or gas in large quantities). Isn't that the point of futures contracts - to smooth variable prices?
Yes - there are a number of financial instruments that large producers and consumers can and do use to hedge their risk. It's not necessarily easy and doesn't always work, and everything has a cost, but these claims of high oil "destroying the economy" (without providing any evidence) are a bit overblown.
Re: The U.S. is now energy independent
#105Sigh. 1. A barrel of oil isn't just gas.. About half is for bunker oil, diesel and kerosene that runs boats, trucks and jets. That need isn't going away no matter how many batteries you make. The rest (40-50%) of the barrel is a waste stream that can be used as light gasoline, plastics and chemicals. We will always have the second half because we always need the first half. 2. As others have mentioned, all oil is not…
Ships can be made to burn just about anything as fuel, the main problem is just whether existing ships can burn different fuels without major re-engineering. Even electric shipping is possible, but would require substantial infrastructure investments (e.g. buoys in the middle of large oceans every so often connected to trans-oceanic power cables so the ships can recharge regularly). Electrified shipping will probably happen before electrified long-distance aircraft, anyways.
Something like 40% of global shipping is just moving fossil fuels around, so decarbonizing electrical production and transportation would cut back significantly on the amount of bunker fuel needed for ships even if they continue to run on bunker fuel for the foreseeable future.
Re: The U.S. is now energy independent
#106Producing more oil than you consume does not, as the article claims, make you truly energy independent. The US will always have to import oil from other countries to meet its needs, because not all oil is the same, and the type of oil that the US produces is not the type that it needs. For a better understanding: https://www.api.org/news-policy-and-issues/blog/2018/06/14/w...
A better argument would be whether there are any restrictions at all that, during a world shortage, would prevent companies producing oil from exporting it to other parts of the world to the detriment of local US consumers. There aren't, so the US isn't independent on anything: the regular citizen will get priced out of the market regardless of their need the moment there's profit to be made elsewhere.
Having to pay market prices isn't the end of the world; the U.S. is a wealthy country, so we can afford it more easily than a lot of others. (It would, of course, hurt poor people the most.)
I think restrictions on exports are a good idea, but based on climate rather than protecting cheap domestic fuel. I mean, why do we sell coal to China when we know we're eventually going to be paying the externalized cost of CO2 emissions when they burn it, just the same as if we burned it here? Better to restrict sales (especially to countries we aren't getting along well with) except in situations where it makes sense strategically (i.e. selling to Europe to counteract the leverage Russia has because they can turn off a substantial portion of their natural gas supply).
Re: The U.S. is now energy independent
#107Sigh. 1. A barrel of oil isn't just gas.. About half is for bunker oil, diesel and kerosene that runs boats, trucks and jets. That need isn't going away no matter how many batteries you make. The rest (40-50%) of the barrel is a waste stream that can be used as light gasoline, plastics and chemicals. We will always have the second half because we always need the first half. 2. As others have mentioned, all oil is not…
Ships can be made to burn just about anything as fuel, the main problem is just whether existing ships can burn different fuels without major re-engineering. Even electric shipping is possible, but would require substantial infrastructure investments (e.g. buoys in the middle of large oceans every so often connected to trans-oceanic power cables so the ships can recharge regularly). Electrified shipping will probably…
I'm enormously biased as someone into sailing, but I do love the idea of re-instating wind power as a secondary or even primary source of propulsion for certain kinds of shipping.
Re: The U.S. is now energy independent
#108Sigh. 1. A barrel of oil isn't just gas.. About half is for bunker oil, diesel and kerosene that runs boats, trucks and jets. That need isn't going away no matter how many batteries you make. The rest (40-50%) of the barrel is a waste stream that can be used as light gasoline, plastics and chemicals. We will always have the second half because we always need the first half. 2. As others have mentioned, all oil is not…
Are jet engines really that fussy with the fuel? Traditional gasoline Otto engines need high octane fuel because the fuel is injected before compression, so the gasoline should not spontaneously combust even at high compression rates. Diesels are less strict since the fuel is only injected when it needs to immediately combust. But there are still knocking issues from combustion dynamics. Rudolf Diesel's first engine…
Wasn't there a turbine-powered car at one point that would run on just about anything and was very reliable but got canned because of the high production cost?
Re: The U.S. is now energy independent
#109Sigh. 1. A barrel of oil isn't just gas.. About half is for bunker oil, diesel and kerosene that runs boats, trucks and jets. That need isn't going away no matter how many batteries you make. The rest (40-50%) of the barrel is a waste stream that can be used as light gasoline, plastics and chemicals. We will always have the second half because we always need the first half. 2. As others have mentioned, all oil is not…
Ships can be made to burn just about anything as fuel, the main problem is just whether existing ships can burn different fuels without major re-engineering. Even electric shipping is possible, but would require substantial infrastructure investments (e.g. buoys in the middle of large oceans every so often connected to trans-oceanic power cables so the ships can recharge regularly). Electrified shipping will probably…
Batteries for ships will not be a thing. But re-tanking them to carry and burn synthetic anhydrous ammonia will be. It will happen because ammonia will come to be cheaper than bunker oil, enough so to pay for the conversion.
Meanwhile, supertankers full of anhydrous ammonia will sail from the tropics to high latitudes in winter to burn in what had been natural gas power plants, because even extracting natural gas will not be competitive.
Re: The U.S. is now energy independent
#110Sigh. 1. A barrel of oil isn't just gas.. About half is for bunker oil, diesel and kerosene that runs boats, trucks and jets. That need isn't going away no matter how many batteries you make. The rest (40-50%) of the barrel is a waste stream that can be used as light gasoline, plastics and chemicals. We will always have the second half because we always need the first half. 2. As others have mentioned, all oil is not…
Yes, the US imports as much oil as it exports: quality in, shit out.
And the wasted energy is enourmous to even barely preserve the quality of life.
I think Russia is not invading Ukraine as much as the US is slowly (expanding NATO over decades) "invading" Russia because it desperately needs it's high EROEI sources to pretend we have "business as usual".
To no benefit since war consumes too much energy.
For the rest of human civilization we will have to fight against nature to extract less and less energy.
Only 1 solution: Stop using energy, NOW!
Raspberry 4 as desktop, Rasperry Pico as mobile. Small apartement/house (20 square meters per person max.). Work from home (no office to heat/cool). Bike for every day transport, train when too far. Bus only if you have to. Never Car/Fly.
You will have to change, now or later dragged by your hair.