I don’t usually go for political articles, but this one deserves mention for the wholesale idiocy about energy on display.
Don Monfort writes: Submitted on 2011/10/01 at 10:24 am
Sorry to stray off topic, but I was flabbergasted by something I just read:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204226204576602524023932438.html
The most flabbergasting part; our energy policy is based on fantasy:
When it was Mr. Hamm’s turn to talk briefly with President Obama, “I told him of the revolution in the oil and gas industry and how we have the capacity to produce enough oil to enable America to replace OPEC. I wanted to make sure he knew about this.”
The president’s reaction? “He turned to me and said, ‘Oil and gas will be important for the next few years. But we need to go on to green and alternative energy. [Energy] Secretary [Steven] Chu has assured me that within five years, we can have a battery developed that will make a car with the equivalent of 130 miles per gallon.’” Mr. Hamm holds his head in his hands and says, “Even if you believed that, why would you want to stop oil and gas development? It was pretty disappointing.”
America is still going to use oil in 5 years, but I’d rather it be domestic than foreign, wouldn’t you? Alternate technology takes time to develop and there’s zero chance we’ll all be driving electric vehicles in 5 years.
Obama said this when he was running for office:
Obama pledges to end oil dependency
Friday, August 29, 2008 (KGO ABC7 Television)
“I will set a clear goal as president: in ten years we will finally end our dependence on oil in the Middle East,” said Democratic Presidential nominee Barack Obama.
…
“If he means what it sounds like it means, it’s impossible,” said Stanford University Professor James Sweeney.
I guess we know what he meant by that now.
When the presidential limo becomes an electric vehicle, I’ll take his pledge seriously.
The vehicle fuel consumption is about 8 miles per gallon which on metric system corresponds to around 30 litres/100 km – source specs
JeffL,
Check out Eagle Ford shale oil. Production is going through the roof down there. It is close to 4 MMBPD, I believe. Don’t think we can back out OPEC, but it is pretty impressive down there.
I don’t think we can get rid of OPEC oil, but maybe with heavy shale oils in Colorado and Wy.
In the late 40’s, Heinlein wrote “You have mistakenly assumed malice where an explanation of stupidity would suffice.” Indeed. They don’t have a clue. Well, none of them ran a business, met a payroll, delivered a product, so how would they know?
As for 25% conversion to electrics, closer to 5%. Yes, we have a surplus of electricity at night, in some places, lower rates. But start charging cars at 30kW or more and the surplus goes away rather quickly, along with the cheaper rates.
My solution (you read it here) is fuel cell -> battery -> electric motor. Liquid fuel is the only practical answer in the short term. Fuel cells can be very efficient. Battery can supply peak current for acceleration. Natural gas needs high pressure to store a useful amount. It works, but safety and maintenance questions (fuel cells can use it, so perhaps.) Filling stations are few and far between. Coal to liquid may address some of the import issue.
Will take a wee bit more than five years.
I teach a course in engineering economics, and one of the special topics I prepared a couple of years ago concerned the switch to renewable wind/solar/biofuels. To reach Al Gore’s goal of a complete transition of the electrical grid by 2018 to wind, the cheaper of solar/wind, would take yearly investment of $560B without taking changes in transmission infrastructure, or decommissioning of old power plants into account. For perspective this is the entire U.S. savings per year. SO, no replacement of any capital goods, just put up new wind turbines, until 2018, and then decommission coal/gas plants and put up lines. Can we go two decades without improvement of the nations capital? People like Gore, have no idea what they are talking about.
They should switch Nobels; Obama gets the science one and Chu the Peace Prize.
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Glad I’m an Engineer, not a terrorist or someone with an “adgenda”. It would take about 15 seconds to make the “beast” worthless, and about 2 minutes to eliminate it and it’s occupants.
After seeing that video, it should be obvious, it supplies NO security.
Fools.
Oh, c’mon, it’s easy to get 130 miles per gallon from your battery. Just put sails on the car.
Or have the government mandate gliders for all and we can all get infinity miles per gallon.
Did you know Uncle Fester piloted a glider in Burma during WWII? I can see him in the cockpit, grinning.
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Now add this little gem to the equation.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/10/01/fed-plan-to-consolidate-power-over-nations-power-highway-has-states-nervous/?test=latestnews
Step 1 ; take control of auto companies
Step 2: push for electric vehicles with tax subsidies, bankrupt the competition
Step 3: take control of where power lines are
Result: more government control over where you can go and what you can do.
These people are not idiots, They are following a well thought out plan to turn the U.S. into the GDR.
By the time battery technology is finally good enough to provide a reasonable range, it will only be needed as a buffer in a fuel cell powered system anymore.
I see Saudi Arabia is in a silent panic. Domestic consumption of oil will exceed production in just 19 years.
http://www.emirates247.com/news/region/saudi-alarmed-by-high-oil-demand-2011-06-19-1.403349
So yes, the US could exceed OPEC oil production when you factor in the 40% exaggeration in their reserves, not to mention the same for other ME countries.
If we could produce electric vehicles to replace ICE cars there is nowhere near enough electricity
AND how can any bankrupt nation afford millions of expensive new cars!
The wrong people are running the show!
George Turner says:
< October 1, 2011 at 2:53 pm
< "Power plants can barely break 50% thermal efficiency"
I think you will find that most coal-fired power plants do not even break 40% efficiency.
pdtillman says:
October 1, 2011 at 3:20 pm
…If Bakken does hold 20+ billion barrels of recoverable oil, it would be among the planets top ten oil fields:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oil_fields
And, as crude oil recovery technology improves …
Then there is the up-coming Niobrara and Mowry prospects in Colorado and Wyoming. I don’t know that anyone understands these two prospects yet, they are apparently but a petroleum engineer I know thinks these two each hold about 250Billion barrels of which 5% might be recoverable with current technology.
Think about this…animals have been living and dying on continental margins and slopes for, what, 3 billion years, and people think we are short of hydrocarbons? People here say, of course, “Yes, but at what price?” Oil is just about as cheap today, relative anything of constant value, as it was in the 1920’s, and people were concerned about supply then, too.
Despite all efforts of the Administration.
Wonderful. This country and Europe are in a recession with a rather disappointing outlook for a rapid recovery. This is in part due to our chasing some environmental pipe-dream on “green” energy which has driven up the cost of everything.
We need now more than ever the least expensive energy we can find to help leverage ourselves out of this serious economic morass. We need energy that we can use in the vehicles we have and the ones we will have in the next few years. Not everyone can just run out and buy an extra battery powered car to run errands in.
The current fleet of cars mostly burn some form of liquid hydrocarbon fuel. Let’s work on developing liquid hydrocarbon fuels from any promising source. In this country, we have an abundent supply of methane (lots of hydrogen) and water (more hydrogen) and coal (lots of carbon). Germany used these sources to make gasoline during WWII using 1930s technology. Most of their high grade aviation fuel was made that way. Process efficiencies then were not very high.
Now we have 21st century technology to apply to these basic proven processes and it is not. unreasonable to expect to see efficiencies improve with experience. The main threat to instituting these developments in the past was economic. Oil producers could increase supply or cut price into a free global market and starve out competitive sources. That is becoming a less viable threat but in recent years environmental objections, valid or not, have served to discourage attempts at creating a new industry that actually could make us independent of OPEC oil. .
In five years? I guess that the delivery order was placed with China ….yesterday!!
Does 0bama (or Chu for that matter) have the slightest clue as to what the feedstock is for plastics, asphalt, and a lot of other stuff that is not burned in internal combustion engines and some boilers? Yep, you got it, oil. Gad, where did we ever find people this stupid? I know some smart people (e.g. Anthony) live in CA, so that cannot explain all of it. Now I know why this bozo does not want his transcript(s) released. Apart from the fact that they well may show that he tried to game the system by stating he was an Indonesian citizen by virtue of the adoption by his step-father. If he did that after 18 he is one and not an American citizen, dual citizenship did not exist at the time. At the age of majority, he could have declared himself to be one of three things 1) An American citizen by virtue of his birth in America, 2) A citizen of Kenya (potentially dual with US, I am not sure of what the status of dual citizenship was with Kenya at the time), or 3) A citizen of Indonesia exclusively. Dual citizenship with Indonesia exists at the moment, but did not back then. Whatever he declared himself to be through his actions and statements are what he is. If he stated on his college application that he was an Indonesian in order to game the system to get into Occidental, he is one. If he traveled to Pakistan on an Indonesian passport junior year, he really is one with a vengeance. A record of his visa or an American passport showing entry and exit stamps from Pakistan would clear that up. Records prior to 1980 have been reportedly been ordered to be destroyed however. http://www.wnd.com/?pageId=230829 [An interesting note on the difference between his life story and his book is also noted.] But that aside, it would show us his grades. His Harvard Law Review letter of 1990 would have earned me an F in 9th grade English. Now I am an engineer. (PhD MIT ’78 – EE – Thesis in Temperature Profile Retrieval From Orbiting Microwave Satellites under one of the pioneers in the field; Prof. David Staelin) This engineer is often noted for his ability to write and speak Manglish, a variant of American English in which all spelling and syntax are totally mangled. However, even I parse the sentence for the subject object and verb to make sure the tenses, etc. all match. I screw up on posting like this from time to time, but this is not intended to be a published letter, paper or article either. 0bama is hiding something or several things. Either his grades stunk, or is not an American citizen, or there were disciplinary problems along the line or one or more of these.
More Soylent Green! says (October 1, 2011 at 3:09 pm): “Nearly 20 years ago, PBS had a program regarding the history of the oil shortage/energy crisis.”
Would that be NOVA season 16 episode 09 “The World Is Full of Oil”, aired in March 1989? That one was a real eye-opener.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/listseason/16.html#1609
“I don’t usually go for political articles, ……”
Anthony,
I am dead serious when I say that you are one my heroes and you are helping to save this Republic.
But, in all due respect: It was NEVER about science. It was always about money, and power, and most of all it has been about POLITICS.
Regards
Steamboat Jack (Jon Jewett’s evil twin)
sceptical says:
“Mr. Hamms belief that America can produce as much oil as OPEC is flabbergasting. It is also flabbergasting that people believe the Obama administration wants to stop oil and gas development. Domestic oil production has risen since Obama took office.”
You are mis-characterizing what Hamm said. He did not say that “America can produce as much oil as OPEC.” The article quotes Hamm: With the right set of national energy policies, the United States could be “completely energy independent by the end of the decade. We can be the Saudi Arabia of oil and natural gas in the 21st century.”
It seems obvious that when he said “replace OPEC” he meant as a supplier of the oil that we buy from OPEC and consume in the US. He seems to be very successfully doing his part to accomplish that.
Oil production has risen despite the Obama gangs impediments. In the same article it is mentioned that 6 oil companies have been busted on criminal charges, for allegedly causing the deaths of 24 nondescript birds. Up the road from where I live, they say that scores of golden eagles, and thousands of others of our feathered friends, have been killed by the wind turbines in Altamont pass. I don’t see how that happens, because the wind mills are usually just standing there like statues on the occassions that I pass through there. But that is OK. The point is that the Obama gang is impeding, harassing, and delaying oil and gas drilling, while slobbering over any solar or wind boondoggle that comes along. Obama’s dream and policy is to replace fossil fuel energy with crap like solar, battery LOL!, and wind power. But you must not have heard about that.
kim says:
October 1, 2011 at 4:19 pm
“Oh, c’mon, it’s easy to get 130 miles per gallon from your battery. Just put sails on the car.”
Yes. Everything was going well with the prototype until we approached the highway underpass…
/government science
Several have commented on whether the US can produce enough oil and gas for domestic consumption.
I ask if it is a good idea for the US to attempt to do so.
There was a time when America was the innovator of the world – forget about natural resources and where they come from. It’s what you turn them into that matters.
I watched a special on the Dreamliner, a new aircraft that makes heavy use of composites and uses less fuel to go further distances. Isn’t that more America than not buying oil from Canada or Mexico?
This story has echos of the Emperor’s New Clothes, except that the little boy would not be anywhere near enough to the Emperor to shout to him. How would one get the word about clotheslessness to Steven Chu or Pres. Obama?
IanM
Should have been gas and not goes – darn iPad spellcheck
Meanwhile our UK Prime Minister will ensure that plastic bag consumption from super markets will be reduced.
It is so nice to see our Western Leaders tackling major priorities when the economy is collapsing due to idiotic green policies.
Obama does not have a clue but that is ok because no other Western leader does…
How did we ever get to be run by morons who think the center of the Earth is at millions of degrees!
Macro Contrarian (@JackHBarnes) says:
October 1, 2011 at 3:55 pm
but CNG in bulk in the US is currently both cleaner and cheaper to burn
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It won’t be cheaper when the demand goes up………….
Too little, MPG or vision, the Aptera series 2 electric version should hit the streets at 200MPG equivalent, the gasoline hybrid version should get 130 MPG on gasoline only. The Leaf is getting 99 MPG equivalent and the Volt gets 93 MPG-e today.
“sceptical says:
October 1, 2011 at 4:00 pm
Mr. Hamms belief that America can produce as much oil as OPEC is flabbergasting. It is also flabbergasting that people believe the Obama administration wants to stop oil and gas development.”
Sceptical,
Do you have trouble with english comprehension? Did you not understand what Obama said? He has said this several times. He has also said he will ensure that no new Coal fired power plants are ever built.
As for American Oil & Gas, it is indeed plausible that America could produce as much as OPEC but this would probably require opening the 90% or so of offshore America that is currently off limits to oil and gas. It would not be necessary to produce that much and it might drive down oil prices such that economics would not warrant it. However, that the US still has vast reserves of oil is in fact highly likely.