Interesting diary at dKos on oil profits and oil production.
Peak Oil
by John Cole| 5 Comments
This post is in: Excellent Links, Science & Technology
by John Cole| 5 Comments
This post is in: Excellent Links, Science & Technology
Interesting diary at dKos on oil profits and oil production.
Comments are closed.
srv
I wonder who Exxons candidate for 2008 will be.
Even if reserves haven’t peaked, production has. Some will blame the environmentalists, but I guarantee that whenever a new refinery comes on-line, an old one will be shut down.
It would be interesting to see a yearly analysis of refinery maintenance (shut downs) schedules and seasonal consumer consumption. I bet there’s no relationship whatsoever…
JonBuck
Algal biodiesel
Webster Hubble Telescope
Reserves have also likely peaked if you consider that those are all optimistic projections by oil people that are pissing in their pants.
JonBuck
Cellulose ethanol.
There are alternatives out there. But we’re going to have a very rocky and difficult time before they really start to have an impact.
But consider this. In 1998 we made 500,000 gallons of biodiesel. Last year we made 25 million gallons.
This year, 125 million gallons.
We currently have 45 biodiesel plants operating in the United States. There are 50 under construction, with capacities between 5 and 50 million gallons per year. Many will become operational next year. Though they mostly use soybeans, it will still work as a stopgap until the algae become viable (~5 years). Check out Green Fuel Technologies.
We will have dozens of these small biodiesel plants all over the country pretty soon. This is how industries start. It probably won’t be enough to alleviate shortages and very high prices, though. So we will have to become more efficient, tighten out belts, and prepare for shortages.
Gray
This Michael Fumento guy (the Malkin link) seems to fit into the same drawer as Steven Milloy. He only cites facts that will help his argument and omitts everything that would give the reader some more background. One example: “On the whole, the industry expects production to triple by 2020.” He links this to a WaPo story that also states that this industry is cuttently producing 1 million barrels/day ans expects about 3 millions by 2020. In perspective, the US is currently consumting more than 20 millions barrels every day. It looks like the traditional oil production is on the decline and this alternative source will only be able to produce 15% of todays needs in 15 years. So there are no reserves for more oil consumption in the future. This isn’t exactly a reassuring outlook, and it shows that we all should “pitch in by being better conservers of energy” (even W digs something every other year…).