Oil climbs peak, economies plumb depressions

Tag : Waste Oil Changer

Nelder said he sees electricity becoming the basic type of energyand most vehicles will no longer burn liquid fuels of any kind. Theelectricity will more and more be generated using renewablesources. That’ll take a lot of capital and a lot of changeand we are moving too slowly now to avoid disruption, Nelder fears.The renewable energy contribution to the world supply now is about1%. Even if it doubled every year it would not begin to keep upwith growing demand. The IEA estimates the globe needs a $45trillion investment in energy business and research. That evendwarfs the American military budget, the world’s largestfocused spending effort right now.
Current levels of renewable investment and component production arenot nearly enough to ease the dependance on fossil fuels. Rightnow, Nelder says, any energy sector investment that’srational is a good one. He didn;t need to add, even on oil drilingrigs. Much money will be spent trying to ooze out those last fewmillion barrels. Energy and food will be the crucial materials in the comingdecades.
Countries that are most dependent on oil or imported energy of anykind will hurt the most in coming decades. Poorer nations will seewidespread food shortages. Nations like Japan, New Zealand andAustralia that are heavy energy importers will suffer. The worldeconojmhy will suffer an extended depression. Nelder said somesmall nations are prepared. Denmark and Iceland are nearly energyindependent already. I can add that several European Union membersfrom big Germany to tiny Portugal are rapidly moving away fromfossil fuels.
Nelder: Investing in renewable energy production is costly up frontbut once built the raw material is free. Wind. Solar. Tidal.Geothermal. He says any one of those technologies, fully exploitedand wisely deployed could supply the planet’s energy needs.But getting us unhooked from oil? We can’t go cold turkey sothe treatment will take numerous interventions.
Nelder: We have used up our easy to get and best sources of allfossil fuels. Many of the world’s richest oil fields arethirty-fifty years old and pumping less each year. We’reworking our way down from anthracite, through bituminous andsubbituminous coal, and lignite, because we have used the highestenergy content stuff first. There is a good deal of coal left ofall kinds, but like oil (where about half of it is left) what weshould care about is not how much remains, but the rate at which wecan extract energy from it. There’s still some anthraciteleft, but its overall contribution to the current coal mix issmall, and declining. Meanwhile moving all that coal gets more andmore expensive because we still generally use petroleum-based fuelsto haul large amounts of coal. You see where this is going? Thesame process is at work in the oil fields where the best andeasiest aqccessed crude has been used up. More and more technologyand CO2 pumping and hot water pumping and energy-intensiveprocesses are needed to pump the crude.
Deep-sea drilling can provide some more oil from unused oil fields.The equipment is very expensive. One drilling ship costs over ahalf-million dollars per day, and it can drill for weeks and findnothing. That will be reflected in your price for gasoline. Neldersays there is no way the globe can produce enough deep-sea drillingrigs to make much impact, even if all the wells are greatproducers. Deepwater oil wells deplete more quickly than those onland.
Nelder cited the infamous Mukluck exploration off the Alaskan Coast in 1983. Over$1.6 billion spent in 1983 dollars (more than double that today) and a dry hole was all they found.We car drivers paid for that drilling, not to mention the taxwrite-off that taxpayers picked up. Such risky ventures that failwill become more common as oil prices soar.
Early in our conversation Nelder said one of the worst parts ofdealing with energy: there is so much BS in the petroleum industryand so many key people in the business operating on falseassumptions.
Nelder actually likes oil, says we should burn up less of itbecause we need it for so many other things from medicines toplastics. Let’s conserve. That’s the easiest thing todo, he says. Be more efficient. Save some of this precious oil forfuture generations.
A WHOLE MOUNTAIN RANGE OF NASTY PEAKS
All the currently widespread energy sources are bound to peak,according to Nelder’s research. Coal will peak by 2025 unlesswe continue to increase our use. That will just hasten the decline.Nelder says “clean coal” is a just a bumper sticker,not a technology being deployed commercially.
Nuclear will also peak around 2025. U235 is now costing ever moreto find and refine. Rebuilding old nuclear power plants is just tooexpensive to expect because higher oil prices are raising the costof materials from steel to concrete.
Natural gas produces 20% of America’s electricity, andit’ll peak around 2020. He says the cost and technology forLNG makes it highly unlikely there’ll be a growth in thatindustry. And, he pointed out, the ideal terrorist target would bea ship loaded with LNG. Like a hydrogen bomb, he said. So nobodywants the ships or LNG plants anywhere near them. Natural gas willremain primiarily in pipelines.
Nelder said the best move he’s made in light of current oilprices: working at home. He now drives about twenty miles per week.That’s not even an average daily commute for all those poorfolks on there on the Interstate.