ripskii

High Gold Prices: It's the Oil, Stupid

One of the most interesting observations is that your SA articles generate an unusual volume of comments. Many of them argue opposite views, but also offer thoughtful and informed views that are useful. As an example, the NH4 proposal is quite interesting and in fact flows right into Herfner's gas transformation theory which I doubt holds up in basic physics. As you must recall, he dismisses nuclear energy as a "solid" which I reject as fundamentally missing the point of a basic process of energy generation. Nevertheless your exchange provides an excellent forum for discussing ideas for solving our energy dependence issues and working toward a solution to get us off imported oil that will reduce our trade deficit and save our economy.

High Gold Prices: It's the Oil, Stupid

Tructot: Creating a viable NG fueling infrastructure does not require trillons$. NG pipelines now cover a vast portion of our country and are growing rapidly. Many fleets of trucks and buses are already using CNG and LNG. In some areas you can buy a new Honda GX designed to operate on CNG now. The home CNG fueling device (Phill) can be installed in any home with gas service now. Long haul heavy trucks are now available with CNG & LNG engines courtesy of Westport (WPRT) and the LNG models can travel a long distance before refueling, so only a few carefully sited LNG refueling stations can support our long haul network. A number of them are in place now. See CLNE reports for current status and plans on that front. The train has already left the station and could be greatly accelerated by some wise policy decisions in Washington, which so far are lacking, Write your representatives and demand action now!

High Gold Prices: It's the Oil, Stupid

Imported oil adversely affecting our trade balance is so obvious as pointed out in the article, it is very difficult to rationalize our failure to address the problem for over three decades. Have we reached the point of no return? If not, we are very close! NG for transportation fuel is the easiest near term solution as well stated in this article. However we must do much more to insure our energy future. Advanced nuclear power has to be part of a long term solution using a design similar to the IFR reactor concept which is much more efficient that current light water reactors. It also goes a long way to resolving our accumulated nuclear waste problem. Wind and solar also can be a significant part of the solution, getting us off imported oil. The latest Scientific American has an interesting article advocating a long term wind and solar solution. I think advanced nuclear is also required to provide the baseload power that those variable sources lack.

www.scientificamerican...

A Crude 10 Year Perspective: The DJIA, Oil and Gold

You should add the dollar vs. a basket of other currencies to your table for comparison. I suspect it would reflect a % value decline similar to oil and gold. I note that all U.S. politicians say a strong dollar is good for the country and then promptly vote for policies that weaken it. The theory behind devaluation of one's currency is that it will lead to greater exports due to their lower cost and reduced imports because of higher costs, thus improving the trade balance. Unfortunately our need for oil doesn't fit into this model very well and other than agriculture products what are we exporting?. Oil and gold will continue to thrive as long as we pursue our present path.

We need to immediately ramp of our use of domestic gas for transport fuel as you suggest to reduce our trade deficit and improve our energy security. We also should immediately push forward on advanced fast nuclear power generation to provide base load electrical capacity and also solve our long term nuclear waste storage problem. Other counties are working on this technology (Japan, Russia, China etc.) so we won't be a leader in this for export either if we don't move forward soon. More good paying U.S. high tech jobs are at stake too.

Why Is Congress Agnostic About Natural Gas?

Hopefully someone in the industry will take the NG hybrid design concept seriously and follow up on it. The students at Western Washington did a remarkable job with their NG hybrid Honda demonstrating the viability of the approach. I've read that the energy (Oil) industry is the largest contributor to lobbying congress, so the NG component must be subservient to oil. Note the COP has a large NG component and its stock has been punished for it so far.

west.wwu.edu/ucomm_new...

How Natural Gas Can Save the U.S. Economy

Fitz: You ask a difficult question. This current article imo encompassed the entire issue from an economic perspective. While I appreciate all your research and technical details articles and have learned a great deal from them, when it comes down to making the case for NG transportation fuel it must ultimately stand on its overall economic advantage. The ever increasing disconnect between oil and NG pricing seems to be pushing the solution toward NG more strongly than ever. Of course as you have previously discussed, a totally rational approach requires the addition of all the subsidized and hidden costs to each fuel in order to make a good decision. A good example of this problem is the failure to recognize that electric cars require expensive batteries and most seem to ignore the efficiency, cost and origin of batteries required to make them at all useful. If all the batteries for electric cars are imported which is largely the case now for hybrids are we better off than importing fuel? A total systems view of costs is necessary and you have provided that in this article.

On another point I don't believe the disaster at Kingston TN by the coal industry is well known and I've never seen a cost applied to it. This is just another example of ignoring the total cost of a particular solution.

How Natural Gas Can Save the U.S. Economy

Fitzman: This article is your best yet and rises to a high in covering the entire issue of our excessive spending on imported oil. I noted that just this AM our monthly trade deficit was reported to IMPROVE to only a negative 27 billion $ due to declining imports as a result of our weak economy. If this doesn't underline you main point nothing will.

www.census.gov/indicat...

Oil Is Still the Key to U.S. Economic Future

mmarrkk: Thanks for the comments. The results you describe is similar to what I thought, but not being familiar with the details of pipeline and storage system wasn't sure if much additional storage capacity would become available.

Davemart: Thanks for posting the thorium reactor info and links. It appears that the concept is similar to the IFR reactor program that was shut down in the 1990's. Both approaches are breeder types that use liquid salt cooling systems so the reactor can operate a low pressure and are very much more efficient users of the radioactive materials. I feel that advanced fast reactors are the long term solution for most of our base load electrical generation since they can burn the accumulated light water reactor waste so we must get going on the necessary development to finalize a workable design. GE has a version of the IFR reator, but of course nothing has been done on that front for a very long time. Natural gas is a good transition fuel to solve our immediate problem, but we need to define what the transition is to and develop a workable plan to arrive there before the time expires to accomplish a good solution.

bravenewclimate.com/20.../

Oil Is Still the Key to U.S. Economic Future

Fitz: I've been wondering what the effect of the U.S. gas storage capacity reaching the full status will have on the industry production and pricing? You can see that current excess production going into storage is reaching record proportions. When we reach "full" it will also have a big impact on where to store the large increases in LNG projects coming on line in the near term. I've read somewhere that if present trends continue our capacity will reach full in a a fairly short time. I've even heard that capacity can be expanded by increasing pressure in the gas lines. Any thoughts on this?

www.americanoilman.com/

Oil Is Still the Key to U.S. Economic Future

Recently China has reported car sales higher than the U.S. India is rolling out very affordable cars for their population. If these trends continue there will be no shortage of demand for gasoline (oil) in the near term. Even our most ambitious goals for alternate energy growth will not supplant the traditional sources because they account for such a small portion of our present energy use. We will need substantial quantities of oil and gas for the foreseeable future regardless of our desire to substitute alternatives. Your investment strategy recognizes these facts and makes sense to me.

www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/...

Commodities, Cap and Trade and Natural Gas

Your thesis that nuclear power will not be part of a a short term energy solution is correct for a number of reasons. Current light water reactors are an obsolete inefficient design and none have been built in the U.S. for over 30 years. A much better solution, the IFR reactor design is possible, but the development program was canceled over a decade ago. It will take years of R&D for a good solution to be ready for solve our requirements.

www.sustainablenuclear...

Stay Away from U.S. Treasuries - Invest in Energy Stocks

Dave 5577: You are correct that nuclear power generation must be part of the equation for our base load energy needs. Unfortunately we terminated development on advanced fast reactors that solve most of the problems of present light water reactors (long lived nuclear waste, inefficient fuel use, and lack of inherent safety) over 10 years ago. This will prove to be one of our most serious mistakes in energy policy. Due to this decision we will have to build a number of light water reactors to carry us to the time when we can switch to IFR reactors that will burn up our accumulated waste and reduce the need for uranium mining for a very long time. Hopefully we can learn from past experiences and use a one design that is well proven and economical and quick to produce.

www.sustainablenuclear...

Wind and solar energy are excellent sources of renewable power, but they are such a small part of our total energy production (<3%) there is no way they can fill our needs even with monumental increases. Plus they cannot fulfill our base load needs due to their variability in production.

Stay Away from U.S. Treasuries - Invest in Energy Stocks

The U.S. annual per capita oil consumption is 25 bbls while China's is 1 and India's is 0.8. Present growth of automobiles in China and India far outpaces the developed countries. If we are near peak oil production in the world then the U.S. oil consumption will decrease to provide for developing countries increase. Large oil price increases will drive U.S. oil consumption lower and alternative sources higher. Our comprehensive energy policy or lack of one will have to respond to this dynamic whether we as consumers like it or not. We can choose to mitigate the costs of this to our economy (or not) by making wise use of the resources at our disposal.

Substituting NG for some of our oil use as advocated by Mike is one of the most obvious and easy solutions, but resisted by all the well known and entrenched interests as it will affect their financial positions. The public/consumer interests are always second to these and therefore will only be considered by expressing their concerns through our political system. Write and call your representatives to act in the public interest in this matter.

We have wasted decades by not addressing this problem and the time left to correct it is very short if it is already not too late. Brazil is an example of one country that heeded the messages of the 1970's and 1980's and achieved self sufficiency in energy production. Our standard of living as measured by energy consumption is sure to decline as others rise. Alternative energy sources must be developed and that includes advanced nuclear reactors such as the IFR concept.

www.ourenergyworld.com...

Investments to respond to this situation should include oil and gas producers along with alternative energy and energy service companies. Drillers such as RIG, NE and ATW who specialize in deep water production will prosper as oil prices increase. Oil producers leveraged to production as opposed to refining and marketing such as HES and OXY should be good choices. Alternative energy companies such as WPRT ORA and AMSC are worthy of consideration.

My Thoughts on Oil

An excellent description of our current energy situation that cries out for a rational solution. A comprehensive long term plan is badly needed instead of our usual short term responses to crisis. Nat gas needs to be a major component of any solution because we have an abundanence of it and last time I looked we still had a very large trade deficit, much of it due to the cost of importing 12M barrels of oil daily. As oil prices climb as displayed on the chart this deficit only gets worse. Meanwhile gas prices remain low due to large supply and low demand.

What does it take for the leaders to see the obvious??

Fuel Systems Solutions, Toyota and the Phill

Fitz: I completely agree with all your points about what needs to be done and greatly appreciate your efforts to bring about change. My point about Honda diesel development is that if they were applied to NG we would be much farther toward those goals. Look at what Westport has done to large diesel engines and you'll see what I'm getting at. What we are seeing so far from both Honda and Toyota are their regular cars tweaked a bit to run on NG and not a serious vehicle designed overcome the obvious discussed shortcomings. The VRI car shows what talented students can do.

As you have pointed out we have a very powerful network of gas pipes distributed throughout our country (many at high pressure). The addition of a moderate number of fueling outlets connected to those existing pipes PLUS good range of a NG vehicle will greatly increase the practically of NG cars and lead to their wide acceptance.

www.cumminswestport.com/