The U.S’s oil reserves now larger than Saudi Arabia’s.
Huh. Like Glenn, I’m also old enough to remember when the Obama the Wise told us we couldn’t drill our way out of the energy situation. Reminder: Every resource is a renewable resource with sufficiently cheap energy.
“I’m also old enough to remember when the Obama the Wise told us we couldn’t drill our way out of the energy situation. ”
As am. I And I also recall how Obama made fun of Sarah Palin for her “Drill Baby Drill”.
As has happened countless times, it turns out that Obama is the ignorant clown.
Funny how often Sarah is on the right side of things but then how would everyone else continue to feel so superior?
There is probably no such thing as renewable vs non-renewable energy sources. I learned this from a man from Iran, who upon completing his doctorate in engineering will be working for a major US auto company on how to control spark knock in turbocharged engines. This is to meet the strict 2020 EPA requirements for fuel economy and the even stricter 2025 requirements.
When asked whether “we will all be driving electric cars by then”, his response was “no, I don’t think so, I think we can meet the challenge of more fuel efficient gasoline engines” and also “if the question is one of constraints on resources such as the supply of oil, the electric car also places demands on resources that are in short supply” (rare-earth metals for the motors, lithium for the storage battery).
When you think about it, wind power is far from resource free — it requires substantial amounts of steel for the towers, copper and perhaps rare-earth metals for the electric machine generating electricity, metals for the transmission lines to connect to the grid, and so on. OK, you could probably recover much of those resources, both here and in the electric car, by recycling materials after the device is spent. But there is still substantial consumption of limited resources to get us there.
Coal-to-liquids used to be a big thing in the President Carter era and now they are a no-no because 1) oil is not in as short supply as thought, and 2) the coal-to-liquids process emits much more CO2 for people who worry about that sort of thing. But leaving aside those worries, the natural resource you need for making Diesel fuel or gasoline out of coal is, coal?
Well no, the limiting resource is probably cobalt and other heavy metals used as the catalyst. By definition, a catalyst is something that does not get used up by a chemical reaction but is instead constantly and continuously recycled? Yes, if your feedstocks were chemically pure, that would be the case, but coal is a “dirty” fuel in so many ways, and you end of using up catalyst because your catalyst gets wrecked over time by the impurities.
This is in fact why natural gas is preferred as a feedstock for synthetic (liquid) fuels rather than coal — gas has less contaminants that use up the catalyst by wrecking it. But natural gas is a clean-burning fuel with so many uses, why would you use half the BTU’s in it in the conversion to #2 Diesel fuel? Because there is a lot of “stranded” natural gas produced accompanying oil fields where there is not an infrastructure or pipelines or industry to use natural gas. That gas would otherwise be “flared” (i.e. simply burnt and wasted).
Nice, that was a lot more detailed than that point is generally made.
Considering that many of the things that make “renewable” energy possible comes from the ground, it makes total sense that our friends to the left are working to end mining. Maybe mining companies need a new tagline like, “Sustainably gathering resources for electric cars.” or something.
I have to say I expected the present oil situation to be a lot worse. Still we can attribute much of the cause for the present economic crisis from the increase in the price of oil in the last decade. Much like the Hirsch report said the main way to save oil in the short term is to increase the unemployment rate. Unemployed people don’t need to drive to work and they don’t have the disposable income to travel a lot either. That’s indeed what happened worldwide when oil was over $100/barrel.
We could just say the oil increases were solely due to speculation by the OPEC cartel but I think its a bit more complicated than that. That being said there was never a doubt that there would be oil left. The only question was the price of oil. I have to admit I never expected it to go back below $80/barrel and I was (thankfully) wrong.
As for coal to liquids the technology was used in WW2 by the Germans when they had oil shortages and plenty of coal left. It was also used in South Africa during the Apartheid embargoes. The US also had research during the 1950s or 1960s but it was always limited because there was never a lack of oil production to being with. Only after the 1970s oil crisis was development resumed. I still don’t think such research is a waste of time and money. Canada continued their research and they eventually made the tar sands oil extraction economically viable. Had light oil shale not been developed the US would need similar technology to Canada, but for shale, in order to remain energetically independent.
I think it is wrong to associate the effort to move from oil to alternative energy sources so much with President Carter when the US President who actually started that effort was actually President Nixon. The policies were just continued under Ford and Carter.
One might as well say Obama was the main driver of new nuclear electric production when he’s just continuing polices which started out under the Bush administration.
For all the talk I’ve seen against Obama for his energy policies when I actually looked at them the US Federal government did investment and put priority on diversifying the energy supply but you can’t say it was the main obstacle to oil production. I think there’s more blame at the state level in like California not allowing offshore oil exploration than at the Federal level. For all the anti-Obama talk I’ve heard when I look at his domestic policies he’s usually pretty pragmatic.
I think the electric cars are still viable because the main issue, range anxiety, has been pretty much been solved. Plus it’s not uncommon for a lot of families in the developed world to have at least two cars. The main issues left to solve are the battery prices and battery lifetimes. The main advantages of using electricity for automotive besides the added energetic efficiency would be that it would divorce transportation from any one propellant source and thus it would end the OPEC choke hold forever.
For all the talk I’ve seen against Obama for his energy policies when I actually looked at them the US Federal government did investment and put priority on diversifying the energy supply but you can’t say it was the main obstacle to oil production. I think there’s more blame at the state level in like California not allowing offshore oil exploration than at the Federal level. For all the anti-Obama talk I’ve heard when I look at his domestic policies he’s usually pretty pragmatic.
Refused to allow the Keystone Pipeline to be built for no rational reason. Refused to allow fracking on federal lands.
But the Keystone Pipeline was built. Along the cheaper route which reused existing pipelines as much as possible. The expensive new construction bypass (XL) wasn’t approved and given the crash in oil prices since it was probably the most financially sound decision to do in hindsight.
Still we can attribute much of the cause for the present economic crisis from the increase in the price of oil in the last decade.
Malinvestment based on easy money by the central banks had nothing to do with our current crisis? Housing bubbles brought on by an attempt to fix the dot com bubbles were irrelevant?
Well to a degree the central banks increased the amount of easy money money precisely to try to soften up the impact of a slowdown in the economy. Which created an asset bubble.
As for wind power there was overinvestment in that (plus solar power) here in Europe. To a large degree its a kind of farming subsidy and that was always a main driver in EU policy. The main beneficiaries here, besides the windmill manufacturing industry, have been the owners of the land where the windmills are installed which is nearly invariably farmland.
In the US I don’t think the situation was that acute even despite the farming lobby you have in there.
When you look at main US states where wind power was constructed you end up finding places like Texas which rather unsurprisingly have larger farm sectors. Hardly the places where Democrats get elected.
Most PV solar being installed in the US now is utility-scale, not rooftop. The cost of the former is much, much lower. So even solar is going onto rural land.
I expect renewable electric generation to continue strong growth in the US because of all the natural gas here, which can compensate for intermittency of the renewable sources. Eventually, utility-scale battery storage will come online.
Well the issue is that if you constantly spool up and down a natural gas power plant to do load leveling like that you cut its generating efficiency by like half. In order to use the more efficient combined cycle you need to do baseload generation. So the truth is you don’t save up any natural gas at all, unless you have older non-combined cycle natural gas thermal power plants.
Washington state has lots of windmills and they are placed in places where raptors live. Not only do they despoil the in rural areas Democrats seldom tread, they destroy majestic wildlife. Its a disgrace. Washington has been controlled by Democrats for decades.
They already are making motor oil from natural gas. Shell and Pennzoil have had it on the shelf for a couple of years now. I’ve got the Pennzoil Ultra Platinum in my little 1.6l Nissan Versa which only has a 3.2 quart sump. Just ticked passed 7500 miles since the last oil change interval and not a hint of black on my dipstick. It’ll probably handle 15,000 miles no problem but I’ll probably change it around 10,000 miles since that is how long the oil filter I got is rated for.
Lithium mining is not particularly good for the environment. Some have suggested that we are still in Afghanistan because of the huge lithium deposits found there. No blood for lithium!
It may eventually be extracted from seawater, where it occurs at 150ppb.
BTW, very interesting presentation on seawater uranium extraction. I had followed this in the past, but had no idea the US had been pushing ahead on the science here for the last five years or so. Significant advances here would make breeder reactors unnecessary for the foreseeable future, even if the world goes nuclear in a big way.
http://sf.ites.utk.edu/utk/Play/f291f008e5414828b1a8ec16023ea0041d
I’m also old enough to remember when we were told that additional drilling in Alaska wasn’t a viable option because it would take 10 years for the oil to reach the market. That was 20 years ago.
Somehow it was more profitable for oil companies to leave Alaskan oil in the ground. Not sure of the reason why? Another problem Sarah fixed.