Anandakos

Why Is Oil Creeping Back Up?

@Vuke,

Ah that it were so. Unfortunately, it's not, unless you go with Plutonium breeders or Thorium. There just isn't enough U-235 in the outer crust to get much more than 50 to 70 years' production of electricity assuming only replacement of current aging reactors.

A worldwide increase to 80% would use it up before all the reactors were completed.

Successful Thorium reactors would last a lot longer as would of course PU breeders.

But the truth is that the only way for human beings to maintain a technological society is complete conversion to gravitational (tidal) and solar (direct, wind and perhaps space-based direct if one can avoid cooking all life under the transmission receivers) energy. It's the ONLY way; there is no other option.

All other options will run out quickly at a human population of 6 to 10 billion or more slowly with fewer. But run out they will. Hello; they all depend on resources which are mined from the Earth. The Earth is not growing larger, nor are radionuclides, hydrocarbons, or coal being created at any rate other than one over some huge power of 10 percent of that being consumed.

I have a hard time understanding why so many otherwise intelligent human beings simply are unable to see this incontrovertible fact.

The more quickly we decide to make the transition -- e.g. lower our current consumption in trade for a decent future for humans yet to come -- the more opportunity those in the future will have to use a little of the Earth's amazing treasure trove of biological and stellar riches. The more of it we use, the poorer ALL future human civilizations are condemned to be.

And for you hard-core supply-siders, No, I'm not saying that we should not develop new technologies or "go back to the stone ages" (a favorite canard about "leftists"). I'm saying that each human being alive today should use those technologies which consume non-renewable resources less today and each tomorrow she or he lives.

On May 31 10:16 AM Vuke wrote:

> Freya has it right. Car sales in China now surpass those in the
> U.S.. Add the rush to autos in India, Africa, Indonesia and you've
> got a tsunami of new oil consumption.
>
> But, even more, add the scooters, roto-tillers, generators, tractors
> and other fuel systems billions of people want and a second wave
> appears.
>
> Existing oil fields are in decline and producers are reluctant to
> export the last drops cheaply. New oil, because it's offshore or
> embedded in sands is going to be much more expensive.
>
> Quietly, (as a search in SA will tell you) uranium is appearing as
> the energy source to help fill the void. New reactors are being
> proposed everywhere. If France can generate 80% of its electricity
> from nuclear so can the rest of the world.

Crudomania Is Over

"Since we don't seem inclined to drill here"? Where to start?

Well, how about that fact that there are about 3 million oil wells that have been drilled throughout the world and that 2.5 million of them are in the US. We started first, jumped WHOLE HOG on the train, and poked holes nearly everywhere in the lower 48 that wasn't exposed basalt.

Yes, there are tight rock formations within the US which can yield commercial flows using horizontal drilling and fracturing. Thank goodness for that, because the enormous fall in the price of crude oil has been driven by a drop in consumption of only about 4% worldwide. Given the trajectory of usage by developing countries over the past twenty years, that four percent will be taken up within 18 months or so. Make it 24 because China is in an economic funk right now due to the collapse in exports to the US.

The OPEC exporters buy more than twice as much from Euro and other non-US currency using economies. Do you think that they are going to continue to price oil in dollars forever? The demand for dollars is about to plummet when the de-leveraging crisis wanes, and if oil is no longer priced in the dollar, it will cease to be the world's primary reserve currency. If the Saudi's were smart (and I think they are) they would demand payment in another commodity for their irreplaceable treasure. I think they will, and I think that commodity will be gold; they love it almost as much as do the Chinese and Indians, and it just makes sense to trade one commodity for another. It requires much less storage than most do.

So it's a darn good thing we still have a little bit of crude locked in rocks in the United States; we're going to need it to grow the food we'll need to power our bicycles.


On Jan 06 09:17 AM whisperonthewind wrote:

> Oil is not just gasoline, it is used for way too many things for
> us to stop using it any time soon. Since we don't seem inclined
> to drill here, we must continue to buy it elsewhere. While the price
> of oil was sinking fast, I was picking up a little more here, a little
> more there, and collecting dividends, reinvesting them, and finding
> extra cash here and there to buy a little more. Now, with the price
> of oil up from it's vacation in the 30's, I'm at a happy place.
> It can stay at 50 or go to 75, and I'll buy the gas I need, and heat
> my home, and pay the higher prices because my investments are going
> up at a much faster rate thanks to those low 30's. And when we figure
> out how to replace oil completely, I'll invest in something else.
> Maybe tulip bulbs.

Drilling in ANWR: What's Not to Like?

CLH, Robert J Considine,

You don't like the idea of solar and other renewable energy sources, but you know what? Assuming that human civilization is to last longer than the next 4,000 years, there is NO ALTERNATIVE.

Yes, 4,000 years is a long time, nearly all of recorded history. And we'll all be dead. But it's a paper-thin slice of humanity's biological history, and a few milliseconds of a 24-hour earth lifetime.

But 4,000 years is the longest ANY non-renewable energy resource available to us here on earth will be available. That span is of course the time deuterium fusion, assuming we can get it work and get all the deuterium from all the water in the biosphere, would last at current energy consumption levels.

Fission without breeder reactors will be exhausted in less than 40 years; with breeders it would last about 1,000. Coal would last about 250 but smother us long before it is fully consumed. Oil MIGHT last 30.

There are basically two potential sources of sustainable energy in the universe: gravity (tidal) and thermonuclear at a distance (solar and wind). That's it people.

So far as a plan, Omega nailed it.