naturalsol

The Obama/McCain Energy Charade: Nothing But Empty Ideas

What would bring me out to vote is if either candidate claimed they would support:
1) Polywell Fusion Research at EMC2
2) Coal to Liquid Technology (across the board)

America has lots of coal, it can be converted to petroleum with about 70% efficiency, and costs about 2X what oil does to produce.

As far as hydrocarbons go, 40 yrs of oil left globally, America has coal. Why not increase mining rate and use the coal? Environmentally dirty...so clean it up. Treat mining waste like nuclear waste.

I was hyped about Algal biopetroleum...then i found that it currently costs about $1,600.00/bbl to produce.

We have no patch to replace oil at present. Our best bet, America, is to use what we have: COAL.

Dollar Hurt by Geopolitical Concerns and High Oil

? backwards, again.

Oil Hits $140: What Could Trigger a Reverse?

brian,

i don't believe any number i didn't reach by my own measurements/calculati... the McCain number was just the first one i came across on a google. Search for yourself.

i looked again and the best estimates are still around 31 billion barrels on the US coastlines.

i'm not making this up!! However, some folks claim we have plenty of oil. Well for the next 30 years or so (at current rates of consumption) including coastlines, and total US fields... I believe it was BP's chairman that stated within the last seven months that the world has 39 years worth left.

energy.pressandjournal...

Maybe its a scam, big oil is distorting prices...I mean seriously who better to mess with the supply end?? But why? ... i don't have any thoughts on that yet...

If the world is approaching the end of easy to get to oil...Think about it ~ Western economies have been built on this stuff, and our "growth" not just maintaing current conditions, is dependent on having more energy... And the world may be staring at the finish line of oil.

whatever.

Oil Hits $140: What Could Trigger a Reverse?

If McCain's info is right, not trying to politicize, there are 21 billion barrels of oil on the US coastlines. At current rates of US consumption, estimate 21 million barrels per day, this gives us a whopping 1,000 days. The coastlines are a drop in the bucket.

Shale and liquid oil are different...absolutely... However, the relevant end products are very similar and both would feed into the existing fossil fuel infrastructure.

Pockyclips ~ that's a problem. Real food for thought there.

mmmarkk ... lol,nice name. ah, the problems i was thinking of were habitat destruction and potential spill issues. Yes, its exponentially less destructive than strip mining.

man i've got a lot of time on my hands.

Oil Hits $140: What Could Trigger a Reverse?

well, oil shale is set to be developed. its estimated, pardon my lack of links, to be about 5 times more expensive to produce a barrel of oil from it.

mining the oil shale is environmentally disruptive, much like drilling our coastlines. We have no quick fix that will work, and prolonging our fossil fuel depence (as if there was another option) will require utilizing gasification of natural gas, oil shale mining and cracking, increased coal mining and liquifying, and probable establishing new rigs on the coast.

However all of that merely buys us time. Perhaps 100 years or so...who knows? We need a long term alternative.

When B*sh talks his gibberish and mentions a "simple chemical reaction" that gives hydrogen gas from water...he doesn't mention, or perhaps know, that the reaction 2H2O ---> 2H2 + O2 requires energy input...even if the recently discovered almost perfectly efficient MnFe3O4 catalyst still requires energy input to give hydrogen. Even if some quantum system is devised utilizing tunneling to lower the required energy...some energy is required...
Nothing is coming down the pipe until...well, thermonuclear fusion is safely/effectively harnessed.

And we are running low on cheap, easy to access/produce, energy (OIL). That's whats with the prices.

Cmon...i'm so sick of hearing blame on speculators, and financial instruments.... what happened to supply and demand? Yes, supply can be doctored by big oil, and yes demand can dampened...however oil is non-renewable after all.

the real production limits had to be reached sometime.

The Era of Cheap Crude Is Ending

Brian, where would we get the energy to combine those hydrogens and carbons to make this synthetic petroleum en masse?