Another reason to vote Democrat? Peak Oil is still a thing. It's coming - sooner or later - it's a geological fact!

[Fantine]

My friend just spent $4000 on a battery for her Prius. Of course it has 200,000 miles and is still running well.
Our city is investing in solar. Solar arrays can be in the middle of nowhere and leased by cities.
A school district saved enough to give every teacher a $10K raise--and they sell their excess capacity at a profit.
Oklahoma's fracking created so many earthquakes they banned it in a number of counties.
Not in time for my friend, while house fell off its foundation due to a quake 150 miles away.

 

[SimplyMe]

You state you work in the oil and gas industry but I have to wonder if you are a PR person/lobbyist, with the amount of misdirection. I notice in most cases you aren't even trying to respond to what was said directly, instead trying to misdirect to other issues.

Clearly you do not own a solar or wind powered energy source, as most people don't who actually advocate for them. I do. And have for over 10 years. If you had put your own money where your mouth is, you would not be promoting the foolishness that wind and Solar are free. It is also clearly evident that you don't own an EV. If you did, you would know that without oil, the EV would be completely worthless, nothing more than a toy.

I'll agree that saying wind and solar energy is "free" is not true, since you need to include the cost of installing it, maintenance, etc. You also act as if we quit using "petroleum" (to include natural gas) for power generation that it somehow completely disappears. Yes, I know there are some idiot activists who can't see beyond their nose that say 'abolish oil,' without thinking about still needing lubricants, plastics, "modern" rubber (either petroleum based synthetic rubber or even natural rubber with petroleum additives, such as carbon black), asphalt, and many other products that we cannot have without petroleum.

Natural gas is cleaner and way more economical than wind or Solar Energy. How much energy does it take to make just ONE Big Wind Generator, where does this energy come from now? How long with the Generator last? How much oil does it take to keep it running, which has to be changed once a year, according to the power grid near my home. Solar panels would have to cover most of the farm ground in my county, to supply electricity for just one mid-sized town. And even then, folks would be forced into rationing during the winter months of most States in the US and Canada.

We could conversely ask how much energy it takes to refine a gallon of gasoline? You have all these same issues with gasoline and even Natural Gas power plants but you just want to gloss over that part. Yes, we are dependent on a certain amount of petroleum based products -- again, I don't think any but ignorant activists are calling for a complete ban of petroleum.

And it sounds like your county is not a great place to put a solar farm; there are plenty of places in the US that aren't. The US is a huge country and most areas, at least once away from the Eastern part of the country, has open area. I will also disagree that solar wouldn't work in most states during winter. In fact, one interesting fact I've learned is that for silicon solar cells, they generate more power in winter (are 10% more efficient in cold weather). There are some challenges to winter solar generation, particularly in more northerly areas and particularly if there is a lot of snow -- but it does still work.

A big natural gas well will produce gas for 30 to 50 years with enough energy to supply electricity to 10 times the number of Homes, for 1/3 of the investment.

Ok. But it is also not "free," there is plenty of maintenance and upkeep on those plants -- not to mention the issues of transporting Natural Gas. It is currently one of the better solutions for power, which is why it has largely been used to replace coal power plants. At the same time, though, if it is so great, is no one suggesting converting cars to run on Natural Gas? I recall cities with pollution issues requiring government vehicles to be powered by Natural Gas decades ago -- yet for some reason no one has ever suggested it as a mainstream option for all cars.

How do I know? Because I am in the energy business and have been for 40 years. I have spent more money on solar that many pay for their homes. I wanted it to be efficient. I wanted it to be economical. Fools and ideological idiots all promote that it is all of these things. But they are ignorant. Something they would find out real quick if they risked their own dime.

I won't claim to be an expert on solar but I do know people who have bought it for their homes and it has easily paid for itself. From those I know the most about, they claim that while they were greatly aided by government subsidies helping to pay for the panels, it only decreased the length of time it took them to pay off the panels -- that even without subsidies they'd still have saved money.

At the same time, I don't know of many "experts" that claim that we're going to have solar and wind be our sole sources of energy generation in the near future. I think some hope that eventually that it can be but most know that day is not today, that the technology is not quite there. At the same time, I think many do believe they can do far more, as we get more built out, than we are doing today -- and that the energy will be cleaner and cheaper (with pricing more steady) than with oil and gas. I might be wrong but I believe the hope/plan, at least for now (depending on future technologies) is to have wind and solar account for 40-50% of the US grid in the next couple of decades.

I think there is a huge discussion on how we can end our dependence on petroleum for our power, in favor of "cleaner" energy, though the only viable alternative I currently see discussed in nuclear. As such, it wouldn't surprise me if Natural Gas remains a major part of the US power grid for the next couple of decades.

The point about Deep oil and deep gas, was to expose the LIE that oil and gas are "fossil fuels". Both oil and gas rise to the top of water. There is a lot of Oil and gas found deeper than any life existed, which simply means oil is created in the mantle. Like with many things, this world's elites, like Rockefeller and Bill gates, have scammed the populace to increase their wealth.

Sorry, this has nothing to do with "Elites." Instead, until relatively recently that is what "science" mistakenly believed. I grew up in an "oil town" -- one with a lot of geologists, chemists and the like. My recollection is that, back when I grew up, we had the second largest number of PhDs, per capita, in the US because of oil. As such, it wasn't "elites" that wanted us taught about "fossil fuels" -- the parents (all those PhDs) would not have stood for us learning incorrect things -- and we had a great school system because of that.

Yes, the science has now "changed" -- as we've gone deeper and deeper to get oil they have realized that it isn't "fossils" that created fossil fuels. As tends to be the case, though, for those not involved with science they hold to the things they learned in childhood. Since most people aren't involved with oil for their work, most haven't cared that science has new theories about where oil comes from, so the old ideas persist.

At the same time, this entire discussion is a deflection to what you are responding to -- the issues of having to drill deeper and deeper for oil. It also distracts from the fact that we have major issues with old oil wells in the US, where methane in dangerous quantities are constantly leaking into the atmosphere from these old, improperly sealed wells; not to mention the cost and other issues with sealing all of these old wells, not to mention (when the time comes) how much more difficult it will be to properly seal the new, much deeper, wells.

Complete foolishness. There is more wind and Solar power projects on this planet than have ever existed in the history of the world. Wind power is not possible without oil and lots of it. How much concrete is poured for the average Wind generator? How much farmland is destroyed for Solar arrays even now? These scammers will continue to scam as long as the Government subsidizes them. When that stops, the scam is over.

If renewable energy brought oil prices down in California, why is gas so high there, higher than it was when they had no or way less than 1,200 wind generators?

This is a horrible argument, largely because wind and solar have little effect on gasoline prices in California, or really, anywhere else. Gas prices are higher in California because 1) they have the highest gas taxes in the nation, 2) they have their own special blend of gasoline required to be sold in the state that is only refined in California and 3)California is not allowing new refineries, or even allowing refineries to expand. It is these issues, particular being able to produce enough gasoline at times of high demand if a refinery goes offline (for maintenance or some type of issue), that cause gas prices to be high in California.

The fact is, the price of a barrel of crude oil in California is roughly the same as anywhere else in the world -- because oil is a global commodity affected by the global market. The price of gasoline in California, or even Texas (where something like 20% of power is generated by wind and solar), is not affected by how much power locally is produced by wind and solar.

Why is Oil 75$ a barrel today, when it was under 20 when Trump was President, and they had way less wind generation?

Because of the pandemic, which caused a huge reduction in petroleum usage worldwide. As for part of the reason it went up to $75 today is because of Trump; who pressured Saudi Arabia (and OPEC) to lower production in order to protect US oil companies because the price of oil was so low. It is also relatively easy to find that oil companies intentionally were slow to increase oil production as the pandemic ended, to keep the price of oil high and "earn back" the profits they lost in 2020 due to the Pandemic. Oh, and there is that matter of the war in Ukraine, along with a boycott of Russian oil, that has affected supply and kept oil prices high.

US Presidents tend to have little effect on the price of oil -- again, it is a global market and global supply and demand aren't typically driven by US politics. Though, it is interesting that oil prices are still that high despite the US producing petroleum at record levels, and being the top petroleum producer in the world. That would further seem to indicate that high oil prices have nothing to do with Biden.

Look, I get the social media and the fake news and all. But really, instead of just allowing an ideology to indoctrinate you, why not research with an unbiased mind, what is really happening and why?

And if you are smart, you will never spend 40 grand on an energy source, that can't even provide sustained power for a two-bedroom home.

Please forgive my harshness. I get frustrated listening to folks who talk about a subject that they know less than nothing about, and what they do know, is foolishness.

And I get tired of people who try to gaslight us. I know there are a lot of bad arguments on all sides. EVs aren't perfectly clean, you have to take into account the pollution generated in the build, in the generation of the electricity it uses, etc. Same with electricity generation from wind, solar, or other "clean" sources. The fact remains that they are far cleaner than the alternatives.

 

[eclipsenow]

I would love to point out that we have a minimum of 250 years with known supply.

Source - or I'm not even going to bother. What - you just assert something like this and then reference it a number of times in your own post and hope that by sheer repetition it comes true?

 

[eclipsenow]

high inflation periods count. The chart is indexed for inflation. Current oil prices are not bad at all and natural gas is cheap, cheap, cheap.

From the wiki:

Higher energy prices pushed families into poverty, forced some factories to curtail output or even shut down, and slowed economic growth. It was estimated in 2022 that an additional 11 million Europeans could be driven to poverty due to energy inflation.[2][3] Europe's gas supply is uniquely vulnerable because of its historic reliance on Russia, while many emerging economies have seen higher energy import bills and fuel shortages.[1]​

Global energy crisis (2021–2023) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

The high energy prices also impacted the cost of fertiliser for food - and coupled with Russia invading a breadbasket country like Ukraine, created a global food crisis. Global energy crisis (2021–2023) - Wikipedia

I imagine the impact of OPEC and the USA embargo is what is accounting for much of the rise of oil since the early 70s. There are currently no real word supply concerns. Opec purposely reduces output to drive up prices so the true market price is uknown.

Yes and no. There are geopolitical games with OPEC - and one way America could bankrupt Russia early is by encouraging Saudi Arabia to really open her taps and lower the price. But no - supply could easily become a concern if we abandoned our journey into cheaper and cheaper EV's and the demand increased. See how the BIG grey discovery bars are all pre 1970? We are starting to eat into the oil our great-grandparents discovered.

https://www.researchgate.net/figure/a-Worldwide-oil-discovery-and-consumption-from-1930-to-the-present-and-project-future_fig2_297657715

Yes, and like the solar panels factories that are bankrupt, many of these battery companies will go under as well. Government mandates will get pushed back on EV's the demand is simply not there, it has to be forced down our throats with our own taxpayer funds.

Oh - what - America's going to adopt New Urbanism so fast they won't need cars? Awesome news! Otherwise the demand IS there - it's there at 13.6 million NEW cars each year. Car people are starting to realise that to really judge the price of the car, you take about $10 to 15k off the price of an EV. Why?
1. No lifetime of buying oil. (Electricity is HALF per km - IF you have to buy it. Free if you have solar panels!).
2. No internal combustion engine to service. EV are just a big battery and a few wiper blades and wiper water etc.

America is in a good position with natural resources except rare earth minerals.

You've found some - and us Aussies can sell you all you need.

How far that can extend into the future is unknown. It is good to warn and try to reduce natural resource depletion. I actually am fine with not drilling everything right away. Keeping oil companies off Federal lands for instance will insure there are places left to drill well into the future.

From a climate point of view - we cannot afford to burn the remaining oil, let alone all the gas and coal.

And when you see EV's getting cheaper and cheaper coming out of China - and meet people who have solar + EV's suddenly raving about how cheap it all is - then you'll know.


But for now - the IEA says we are still in a fragile energy market - even though the EU got through the worst of the Ukrainian war gas crisis.

The IEA is the gold standard in energy analysis on a global scale. We should pay attention to anything they say.

Escalating conflict in the Middle East and Russia’s ongoing war in Ukraine underscore the continued energy security risks that the world faces. Some of the immediate effects of the global energy crisis had started to recede in 2023, but the risk of further disruptions is now very high. The experience of the last few years shows how quickly dependencies can turn into vulnerabilities; a lesson that applies also to clean energy supply chains that have high levels of market concentration. Markets for traditional fuels and for clean technologies are becoming more fragmented: since 2020, almost 200 trade measures affecting clean energy technologies – most of them restrictive – have been introduced around the world, compared with 40 in the preceding five-year period.​

​

Fragility in today’s energy markets is a reminder of the abiding importance of energy security – the foundational and central mission of the International Energy Agency (IEA) – and the ways that more efficient, cleaner energy systems can reduce energy security risks. The increasingly visible impacts of climate change, the momentum behind clean energy transitions, and the characteristics of clean energy technologies are all changing what it means to have secure energy systems. A comprehensive approach to energy security therefore needs to extend beyond traditional fuels to cover the secure transformation of the electricity sector and the resilience of clean energy supply chains. Energy security and climate action are inextricably linked: extreme weather events, intensified by decades of high emissions, are already posing profound energy security risks.​

Executive Summary – World Energy Outlook 2024 – Analysis - IEA

World Energy Outlook 2024 - Analysis and key findings. A report by the International Energy Agency.

www.iea.org

 

[Fantine]

I would love to point out that we have a minimum of 250 years with known supply.

We could have 500 years supply and it wouldn't matter if the effect of fossil fuels on the environment destroyed the world as we know it.

 

[eclipsenow]

Yes. Climate change is a thing.
We have a 'carbon budget' of 200 GT remaining before we breach 1.5 degrees warming.
At 40 GT a year - we ARE going over 1.5.
We'll eventually clean up our energy - and the faster we do the sooner the planet's biosphere can slowly start drawing down that CO2 again.

But if we push TOO far over - there are a number of CRAZY scary climate tipping points where nature will hit us with even more outgassing of CO2 and other heating feedbacks. (EG: Loss of ice means from an albedo point of view, we're removing big mirrors from the Arctic that bounce 90% of the sunlight away to ABSORBING 90% of that sunlight across the whole Arctic ocean. And that's just one of many feedbacks.)

As we go over 1.5 degrees and that extra heat filters down through the systems across the next decade/s as Johan Rockstrom says - "Buckle in." It's going to get bumpy!

(He's the climate and Planetary Boundaries expert from David Attenborough's "Breaking Boundaries" series.)

 

[Laodicean60]

From the wiki:

Higher energy prices pushed families into poverty, forced some factories to curtail output or even shut down, and slowed economic growth. It was estimated in 2022 that an additional 11 million Europeans could be driven to poverty due to energy inflation.[2][3] Europe's gas supply is uniquely vulnerable because of its historic reliance on Russia, while many emerging economies have seen higher energy import bills and fuel shortages.[1]

EU needs to look in the mirror when they virtue signals most of their fossil fuels to Russia. As dumb as Trump is he prophesied this day would come to Germany and the rest of the EU. Going green in the EU has led to more coal burning, imagine that.
What fossil fuel company in their right mind would spend billions in oil and gas infrastructure or exploration when the government in the last 15 years has been threatening the shutdown? When prices went up two years ago Biden blamed the oil companies for not producing (dumb). He started to drain the SPR (dumb) to lower prices. We should be offsetting fossils with nuclear which Biden is doing (smart) because you still have to charge an EV and since we are in electrification mode we will need more from our grid.

The high energy prices also impacted the cost of fertiliser for food - and coupled with Russia invading a breadbasket country like Ukraine, created a global food crisis. Global energy crisis (2021–2023) - Wikipedia

Sanctions in Russia also contributed to the cost of all commodities because they are a top producer. China is also big in fertilizer exporters along with rare earths. Energy prices do affect costs but it's not all due to energy there are other input costs companies have to deal with. Our supply chains have been disrupted and cargo ships are traveling farther to avoid the Huthis which has driven up insurance and fuel costs and the cost of goods.

Yes and no. There are geopolitical games with OPEC - and one way America could bankrupt Russia early is by encouraging Saudi Arabia to really open her taps and lower the price.

Didn't we try? The Saudis gave us a big fat middle finger? If they increased production and lowered the price they would be hurting themselves along with other oil producing countries overseas. Maybe scientists in those countries don't feel the existential threat like the West does.

But no - supply could easily become a concern if we abandoned our journey into cheaper and cheaper EV's and the demand increased.

We have them from China, but we put tariffs on them. If CC is an existential threat, as Harris and other alarmists claim, then why not open the market to cheap Chinese EVs? Is the economy more of an existential threat than fossil fuels?

 

[doubtingmerle]

I would love to point out that we have a minimum of 250 years with known supply.

I would love to point out that this is false. What is your source?

 

[doubtingmerle]

Clearly you do not own a solar or wind powered energy source, as most people don't who actually advocate for them. I do. And have for over 10 years. If you had put your own money where your mouth is, you would not be promoting the foolishness that wind and Solar are free.

Private solar and wind doesn't work out so well. When you include the infrastructure to keep a few small solar panels in operation, it gets quite expensive.

But when you have vast fields of solar and wind, the economic justification changes rapidly.

We need to do something to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels. Wind and solar are our best hope (besides simplifying our lifestyles). But it needs to be vast fields of wind and solar, not an occasional panel on a rooftop.

 

[eclipsenow]

EU needs to look in the mirror when they virtue signals most of their fossil fuels to Russia. As dumb as Trump is he prophesied this day would come to Germany and the rest of the EU.

Yes - I hear you! I was shocked when I realised that on this one thing at least - I agreed with Trump. Not because he's brilliant - but because he's miserly and sees running America like running his own family businesses and household (where he is notorious for just not paying various tradespeople etc.) In other words - he resents the amount of money America contributes to global stability - and does not realise how fragile that stability is - and how much MORE expensive it would be if it collapsed. His attitude to NATO is utterly appalling. And in this context, he stumbled on the fact that the EU and Germany bought a lot of energy off Russia. So it fit right into his miserly attitude to NATO and was another thing to whine about.

"What fossil fuel company in their right mind would spend billions in oil and gas infrastructure or exploration when the government in the last 15 years has been threatening the shutdown?"

LOTS OF THEM! They seem convinced that it will never happen - not to oil at least. I'm not sure what you're talking about - they still get SUBSIDIES from the government - and many use this to explore for more.

Note: While in the USA subsidies estimates range because they're in so many tax codes across the states and various kick backs and fuel expenses etc - but the estimate is $10 to $50 billion - forget that. What about global subsidies?
"The International Energy Agency estimated that so-called consumption subsidies for fossil fuels doubled in 2022 to $1 trillion globally."

https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/biden-budget-target-us-fossil-fuel-subsidies-2023-03-09/

"Sanctions in Russia also contributed to the cost of all commodities because they are a top producer. China is also big in fertilizer exporters along with rare earths. Energy prices do affect costs but it's not all due to energy there are other input costs companies have to deal with. Our supply chains have been disrupted and cargo ships are traveling farther to avoid the Huthis which has driven up insurance and fuel costs and the cost of goods."

Good point! Which is why we really need to evaluate the flow of world goods and services between nations and national security implications. You raised the economics of just buying stuff from China - and part of me wants the WORLD to just buy stuff from them. Because Chinese production lines are not in factories - they have whole cities arranged in a production line! This is a whole new system that is only possible in the Feudal power structures of China's weirdly Command Economy meets capitalist business structure. Their central government just authorises a whole new city of say 4 million people to be built at the end of a line of widgets coming downstream from the half dozen cities upstream!

Yes - climate is a very serious threat in that it will hurt global GDP an estimated 30% by 2050. Some $18 Trillion a year. But forget the money! It will also destroy 25% of our food production as we hit 10 billion people! (Hopefully new tech like Precision Fermentation will be feed us then - as that's 'climate proof' food immune to the droughts and storms of climate change.)

But what's WORSE than climate change? Full Scale Nuclear War and 5 billion people - most of the Northern Hemisphere - starving to death in the nuclear winter. THAT'S even worse than climate change! (Warning: this is the worst page on my blog. I'm actually an optimist!)

Yet - just as we were discussing above - does America want to be like Germany and buy all their cheap W&S & EV's from China, depending on them for these basic foundations of modern civilisation? Or does American want to have energy independence and pour money into energy security? Geopolitics and national security vs affordability.

China is eyeing Taiwan - and they're flexing their new muscles. Scary times!

 

[Laodicean60]

But what's WORSE than climate change? Full Scale Nuclear War and 5 billion people - most of the Northern Hemisphere - starving to death in the nuclear winter. THAT'S even worse than climate change! (Warning: this is the worst page on my blog. I'm actually an optimist!)

I grew up hearing the media fearmonger about the atomic bomb and it worked. We had fallout drills when I was in elementary. Lots of old WW2 movies also. Now that my mom has passed I lost the chance to ask her who she was rooting for when me and my dad was watching war movies, especially on Dec 7. What the USA did to save NATO lives was pretty devastating. We are living in a delusion if we think Putin wouldn't do the same.