Price of oil

[CCCCCC]

Price of oil has fallen from above $90 to below $50. The big question is, where will it settle? One idea I have not yet seen is that alternative energy sources, especially solar, has been following a generalized Moore's Law such that in 20 to 40 years, alternative energies will be competitive with oil below $30, without figuring in environmental costs that are rising rapidly. That means any well costing more than $30 will be worthless in less than 40 yrs. There is only enough $30 reserves to last about 30 yrs! This predicts that every oil company will pump as fast as they can and therefore, oil prices will only fall. Of course, there may be brief periods of price recovery, but they will be short lived because oil producers will start pumping like crazy. Has this possibility been discussed, and is there anything wrong with this argument?

[pleppik]

Price of oil has fallen from above $90 to below $50. The big question is, where will it settle? One idea I have not yet seen is that alternative energy sources, especially solar, has been following a generalized Moore's Law such that in 20 to 40 years, alternative energies will be competitive with oil below $30, without figuring in environmental costs that are rising rapidly. That means any well costing more than $30 will be worthless in less than 40 yrs. There is only enough $30 reserves to last about 30 yrs! This predicts that every oil company will pump as fast as they can and therefore, oil prices will only fall. Of course, there may be brief periods of price recovery, but they will be short lived because oil producers will start pumping like crazy. Has this possibility been discussed, and is there anything wrong with this argument?

You are correct that the price of solar has been following a curve of fairly steady exponential decline since at least the past 30 years, probably longer.

I don't see any reason why this curve should slow in the next 20-40 years, though there are those on this forum who would disagree.

But even if the price of solar drops by another factor of ten over the next 15 years, I don't see that oil necessarily has to fall in price. Liquid fuels serve a need that solar has a hard time filling today, because in the transportation business you need a portable fuel source with high energy density (both by mass and by volume). Batteries can't come anywhere close to matching the energy density of oil, gasoline, diesel, ethanol, etc., and batteries are very expensive for what they do.

The fact is that electricity (solar and otherwise) is already much cheaper than gasoline on a price-per-useful-energy basis. That's the only reason electric cars exist today despite the cost and weight disadvantages of batteries.

So for solar power to truly be competitive with oil, what needs to happen is major improvement in battery technology, not a drop in the price of solar. Or, alternatively, someone needs to develop an economical way to produce large volumes of liquid fuel from electricity.

Lots of smart people are working on both battery technology and electricity-to-liquid fuel technology. Whether and when they succeed is an open question.

[Sunking]

Or, alternatively, someone needs to develop an economical way to produce large volumes of liquid fuel from electricity.

We have had that technology since WW-II. Whether you like it or not solar will not play a significant role in electricity production as its EROI s extremely poor o 3 at best, and with the latest battery technology of less than 1 drags that number down to 1.6

NG an coal EROI is greater than 60, and nuclear is greater than 100 with an infinite amount of cheap fuel laying under your feet. Solar is just a political play that will go away. It has already starting to happen now that Solar issues are coming to light and the dirty little secrets behind it. If people understood EROI and the cost associated with it would drop solar in a heartbeat.

The price in oil right now is being driven by OPEC flooding the market with crude oil to drive US and Russian producers out of biz. OPEC can make a profit down to $30/gal, we as US produces have to have it above $50/gal. It worked, and US operators are shutting down, and now prices are rebounding

[northerner]

We have a finite supply of fossil fuels and unfortunately, we are so heavily dependent on them. Eventually, in the long run, it will put pressure upwards on the price of oil, and will make alternatives more economic.

Current supply of oil is about 50 years based on proven reserves. There are plenty of unproven oil fields out there, so we likely won't be seeing a shortage in our lifetimes. Maybe by then, researchers will have fusion power figured out?

[pleppik]

We have had that technology since WW-II. Whether you like it or not solar will not play a significant role in electricity production as its EROI s extremely poor o 3 at best, and with the latest battery technology of less than 1 drags that number down to 1.6

I'm curious where you're getting that EROI number. The sources I've seen (for example, this article, as described here) put the EROI of photovoltaic power at closer to 7.

In any event, the operative word in what I wrote is economical. There's a lot of stuff you could do that doesn't make sense because the capital or operating costs are too high. If WWII-era technology to turn electricity to liquid fuels was cheap enough, we'd be doing it even with an EROI less than one. That's because liquid fuels are significantly more valuable than electricity.

And we'd be burning oil even if nuclear power was free, because you can't power a jet plane or a car with a nuclear reactor (not for lack of trying).

[northerner]

I'm curious where you're getting that EROI number. The sources I've seen (for example, this article, as described here) put the EROI of photovoltaic power at closer to 7.

In any event, the operative word in what I wrote is economical. There's a lot of stuff you could do that doesn't make sense because the capital or operating costs are too high. If WWII-era technology to turn electricity to liquid fuels was cheap enough, we'd be doing it even with an EROI less than one. That's because liquid fuels are significantly more valuable than electricity.

And we'd be burning oil even if nuclear power was free, because you can't power a jet plane or a car with a nuclear reactor (not for lack of trying).

They are trying: http://www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/20...e-out-thin-air

Actually using solar power in this case.

[Sunking]

They are trying: http://www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/20...e-out-thin-air

Actually using solar power in this case.

It is already being done, and like I said the technology goes back to WW-II in Germany. From your link:

The hydrogen and carbon monoxide mixture, known as synthesis gas or ‘syngas’, can then be converted into liquid hydrocarbons such as petrol or kerosene via the well-established Fischer–Tropsch process, which was invented by the chemists Franz Fischer and Hans Tropsch in Germany in the mid 1920s.

Today it is simple and cheap not many folks know about because it is somewhat a secret project ran by DOD and EIA at a nuclear reactor making sure we have ample supply of Kerosene (aka Jet fuel or #1 deisel) in times of war. Nuclear reactors have more than ample excess heat to make syngas. So cheap it is basically free and a by product of electric generation. If you use a coal feed stock which we have tons of can make about any petroleum product you can think of.

[J.P.M.]

It is already being done, and like I said the technology goes back to WW-II in Germany. From your link:



[/FONT][/COLOR]Today it is simple and cheap not many folks know about because it is somewhat a secret project ran by DOD and EIA at a nuclear reactor making sure we have ample supply of Kerosene (aka Jet fuel or #1 deisel) in times of war. Nuclear reactors have more than ample excess heat to make syngas. So cheap it is basically free and a by product of electric generation. If you use a coal feed stock which we have tons of can make about any petroleum product you can think of.

I seem to recall South Africa using that process for fuel stocks back when they were being sanctioned for apartheid policies in the late '70's/80's or so, with some countries actually imposing an oil embargo. Getting liquid fuels from coal may not be the easiest way to get fuel, and probably more cost effective when oil is > ~ $50/barrel, but certainly possible as Sasol and lots of others prove every day.

[Mike90250]

.... Maybe by then, researchers will have fusion power figured out?

No, serious study and development will not happen till we are into shortages. Some barely funded experimental and research, but it's all theory and lab. No "Manhattan Project" scale of work going on.

[pleppik]

It is already being done, and like I said the technology goes back to WW-II in Germany.

...

Today it is simple and cheap not many folks know about because it is somewhat a secret project ran by DOD and EIA at a nuclear reactor making sure we have ample supply of Kerosene (aka Jet fuel or #1 deisel) in times of war. Nuclear reactors have more than ample excess heat to make syngas. So cheap it is basically free and a by product of electric generation. If you use a coal feed stock which we have tons of can make about any petroleum product you can think of.

Fischer-Tropsch converts hydrogen and carbon monoxide ("syngas") to liquid hydrocarbons, but since hydrogen and carbon monoxide aren't readily available in the environment, you need to get them from somewhere. Usually you use a feedstock (coal, biomass, etc.) and bake it to get the syngas, and that feedstock supplies most of the energy in the end product. Used this way, Fischer-Tropsch is really just a way to convert the energy in the feedstock into hydrocarbons.

You can use electricity to split water and CO2 to make syngas, but nobody seems to think that's remotely practical at today's prices. So I stand by my original statement that there's no economical way to convert electricity to liquid fuels with today's technology. But if there was, oil companies would be doing it like crazy.

As an aside--there was a company a few years ago exploring Fischer-Tropsch as a way to make biofuels (using biomass as the feedstock). IIRC they found that (a) it was insanely capital intensive to scale it up to a point where it was economical, and (b) if you built a plant big enough to be cost-effective, it would require the output of a huge amount of land to produce enough biomass to keep the plant running. The economics of trying to truck that much biomass to the plant killed the idea, and I believe the company is now bankrupt.

[northerner]

It is already being done, and like I said the technology goes back to WW-II in Germany. From your link:



[/FONT][/COLOR]Today it is simple and cheap not many folks know about because it is somewhat a secret project ran by DOD and EIA at a nuclear reactor making sure we have ample supply of Kerosene (aka Jet fuel or #1 deisel) in times of war. Nuclear reactors have more than ample excess heat to make syngas. So cheap it is basically free and a by product of electric generation. If you use a coal feed stock which we have tons of can make about any petroleum product you can think of.

The link I provided to the research being done is a process that doesn't require fossil fuels or biomass to produce the syngas. I'm skeptical however ,that they can efficiently produce substantial fuel from CO2 in the air. Existing processes rely on fossil fuels of which there is a finite supply, or biomass which isn't practical on large scale.

[northerner]

No, serious study and development will not happen till we are into shortages. Some barely funded experimental and research, but it's all theory and lab. No "Manhattan Project" scale of work going on.

There is plenty of research and development projects going on now. Depends what you mean by serious study? Spending more money perhaps to actually see results perhaps?

Iter project in Europe: http://www.iter.org/

There is even a project here in Canada: http://www.generalfusion.com/

Here is a list of fusion power experiments: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fusion_experiments

[J.P.M.]

In general, the more concentrated the energy is in the feedstock (or fuel, or energy source for just about any process for that matter), the easier (read usually less expensive) it will be to turn it into something further down ( or maybe along would be a better description) the entropy chain - fuel in a different form, energy, etc., and still have something useful and cost effective, or at least useful as an alternative method if you can't get it via some cheaper alternative, which is usually the way things work anyway. Capitalism's way of acknowledging reality maybe ?

So, coal is a more efficient feedstock than grass clippings or some other biosource for synfuel. Not much of a surprise there.

For the same mass and type of product, the entropy decrease required to get from, say, grass clippings to some type of synfuel (with the attendant and required greater entropy increase in the rest of the universe) - as a measure of how much energy must be added to it to get something useful - is greater than the entropy decrease required to get from coal to synfuel via the Fischer - Tropsch process, mostly as a result of the lower starting energy density of the biosource.

Another (perhaps oversimplified) example: Nuclear fuel is very concentrated energywise. I'm pretty much of a no nuker, but were it not for the safety and disposal issues, real or imagined, it would be pretty hard to beat as an economical energy source for electrical generation. Given the current state of knowledge of distributed electrical generation, probably cheaper than coal.

But, most of this ain't rocket science. Down at the homeowner level, still not as cost effective as simply turning off a light and wasting less energy.

Take what you want of the above. Scrap the rest.

[pleppik]

I'm pretty much of a no nuker, but were it not for the safety and disposal issues, real or imagined, it would be pretty hard to beat as an economical energy source for electrical generation. Given the current state of knowledge of distributed electrical generation, probably cheaper than coal.

I was generally in favor of nuclear power until I realized that about every decade or two a nuclear power plant somewhere in the world has a catastrophic failure, and two-thirds of the time it renders a few hundred square miles of land uninhabitable for an unknown period of time. That's not an expense that seems to be factored into most cost estimates of nuclear power.

I will grant that the statistics are small, but there's definitely a pattern developing.

[Sunking]

I was generally in favor of nuclear power until I realized that about every decade or two a nuclear power plant somewhere in the world has a catastrophic failure, and two-thirds of the time it renders a few hundred square miles of land uninhabitable for an unknown period of time. That's not an expense that seems to be factored into most cost estimates of nuclear power.

I will grant that the statistics are small, but there's definitely a pattern developing.

You are talking about WW-II designs.