[warlog]

Sigh.

1. A barrel of oil isn't just gas.. About half is for bunker oil, diesel and kerosene that runs boats, trucks and jets. That need isn't going away no matter how many batteries you make. The rest (40-50%) of the barrel is a waste stream that can be used as light gasoline, plastics and chemicals.

We will always have the second half because we always need the first half.

2. As others have mentioned, all oil is not equal. Shale and tar sands (tight oil) are not producing the heavy cuts/blends that we require for bunker oil, diesel and aircraft. US will need to balance export of shale based (or nat gas) energy with import of heavier grades of oil. Probably always. This isn't "independence"..it's codependence at best, and it will require the world burning gas for cars. How's your CO2?

3. Peak oil (conventional) was 2005, and then the shale oil financial stunt (thanks negative interest rates!!) took us to Nov 2018 when -- *Before covid* peak oil, and energy happened.

We're on the downslope of production without massive "demand destruction".

4. The energy price predicament is that below $80/barrel, shale and tight producers can't make money (and there will be no further investment) and above $80 and the rest of the economy gets killed.

None of these ideas are mine. All are easily goog'd.

[elihu]

Ships can be made to burn just about anything as fuel, the main problem is just whether existing ships can burn different fuels without major re-engineering. Even electric shipping is possible, but would require substantial infrastructure investments (e.g. buoys in the middle of large oceans every so often connected to trans-oceanic power cables so the ships can recharge regularly). Electrified shipping will probably happen before electrified long-distance aircraft, anyways.

Something like 40% of global shipping is just moving fossil fuels around, so decarbonizing electrical production and transportation would cut back significantly on the amount of bunker fuel needed for ships even if they continue to run on bunker fuel for the foreseeable future.

[throw0101a]

> Even electric shipping is possible, but would require substantial infrastructure investments (e.g. buoys in the middle of large oceans every so often connected to trans-oceanic power cables so the ships can recharge regularly).

A lot has been said about hydrogen powered vehicles, but I don't think it will work for general use. Where it may be useful though is in 'industrial' transport.

It's unlikely we'll see hydrogen 'gas stations' for normal people, but for ships, trucks, and maybe airplanes, setting up the infrastructure may be more practical (fewer, more concentrated stations).

[BoxOfRain]

I'm enormously biased as someone into sailing, but I do love the idea of re-instating wind power as a secondary or even primary source of propulsion for certain kinds of shipping.

[ncmncm]

Batteries for ships will not be a thing. But re-tanking them to carry and burn synthetic anhydrous ammonia will be. It will happen because ammonia will come to be cheaper than bunker oil, enough so to pay for the conversion.

Meanwhile, supertankers full of anhydrous ammonia will sail from the tropics to high latitudes in winter to burn in what had been natural gas power plants, because even extracting natural gas will not be competitive.

[Thlom]

Cruise ships have started to come as hybrids now because some top destinations for cruising have very strict emission regulations that over time will be even stricter.

[thehappypm]

Anhydrous ammonia sounds interesting, got any good articles on it?

[Gravityloss]

https://www.motorship.com/searchresults?qkeyword=ammonia

[davedx]

Good points on the different oil weights.

> The energy price predicament is that below $80/barrel, shale and tight producers can't make money (and there will be no further investment) and above $80 and the rest of the economy gets killed.

Your numbers here are way off. US shale production costs have improved and are now around $37/bbl (source: Bloomberg, yesterday).

> "above $80 and the rest of the economy gets killed"

You really need to provide sources on claims like this.

[bullen]

Yes, the US imports as much oil as it exports: quality in, shit out.

And the wasted energy is enourmous to even barely preserve the quality of life.

I think Russia is not invading Ukraine as much as the US is slowly (expanding NATO over decades) "invading" Russia because it desperately needs it's high EROEI sources to pretend we have "business as usual".

To no benefit since war consumes too much energy.

For the rest of human civilization we will have to fight against nature to extract less and less energy.

Only 1 solution: Stop using energy, NOW!

Raspberry 4 as desktop, Rasperry Pico as mobile. Small apartement/house (20 square meters per person max.). Work from home (no office to heat/cool). Bike for every day transport, train when too far. Bus only if you have to. Never Car/Fly.

You will have to change, now or later dragged by your hair.

[emptysongglass]

> I think Russia is not invading Ukraine as much as the US is slowly (expanding NATO over decades) "invading" Russia because it desperately needs it's high EROEI sources to pretend we have "business as usual".

This doesn't make any sense and is not in any way a mapping to reality. NATO membership is by request only and its numbers have swelled with ex-Soviet republics who want nothing to do with their former master. There is no NATO "invasion", which is a defensive force only. The only occasion I am aware of where they did not act in defense of a member state was to interdict in a genocide.

Ukraine is doing everything it can to stay out of conflict while remaining self-sovereign but it is literally surrounded by 170,000 Russian troops who are less than 40 kilometers on average from Ukraine's border. If any war breaks out in the coming weeks it will be entirely the fault of Russia.

[bullen]

Ok, interesting that you think anything in life is voluntary. We'll see how history judges the affair, in my experience the only way to disseminate truth is to close down the forum where arguments are held: previously books, now the internet.

NATO is responsible for accepting memberships and keeping their promises, and we are responsible for consuming other peoples energy: mostly our own childrens enegy.

Either way, the only way to avoid conflict is by living frugally. So that holds no matter what.

To think that defence can't be offensive is plain wrong. Do you remember the Cuba crisis?

[0ldskool]

you mean that crisis that should have been called the Turkey missile crisis? Wasn't the main cause because USA put missiles so close to USSR that they could bypass the early warning system. USSR was just reacting in response.

[cbozeman]

This sounds like the ranting of a madman. You sound like Energy Thanos.

If you think the modern world is going to grind to the kind of halt that your... "solutions"... would cause, you're seriously mistaken.

The only 1 solution, as you put it, is to innovate our way out of this problem. Nuclear fusion will have to be researched, developed, and implemented worldwide. That's your "only 1 solution".

[Gravityloss]

Are jet engines really that fussy with the fuel? Traditional gasoline Otto engines need high octane fuel because the fuel is injected before compression, so the gasoline should not spontaneously combust even at high compression rates.

Diesels are less strict since the fuel is only injected when it needs to immediately combust. But there are still knocking issues from combustion dynamics. Rudolf Diesel's first engine ran on peanut oil. Ships run on very heavy sulphur rich fuel oil. The range is wide.

But jets? It's a flow process, not back and forth. Historically they were very attractive partly because they were not at all fussy about the fuel they use... If gasoline was cheap, from first principles one could assume that jets would run just fine with it, with only few modifications.

[BoxOfRain]

Wasn't there a turbine-powered car at one point that would run on just about anything and was very reliable but got canned because of the high production cost?

[alephnil]

There was the Rover Jet-1 from 1946. It is exibited (or at least was) at London science museum.

https://collection.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/objects/co25218...

"When JET 1 was launched, the gas turbine ‘jet’ engine was seen as a symbol of modernity and of British technical prowess. Many viewed it as the power source of the future, but test driving showed that its poor fuel consumption and slowness to respond to the throttle made it unsuitable for road transport."

Gas turbines are efficient when they are allowed to run at optimal speed, which is close to the maximal power. Cars starts and stop all the time which is not optimal. In addition, acceleration is poor, which most car owners would find unacceptable. For uses where they can run for a long time on optimal speed, like in power plants, they are a good fit, otherwise not so much.

[Gravityloss]

Yes. In the past turbines were very inefficient. Much higher compression ratio and thus efficiency nowadays. But piston engines have also improved. One problem with jets is that they don't scale down so well because of clearance issues.

Also they might need a secondary system to take energy from the hot exhaust gases. GE has proposed supercritical CO2 cycles for that. Could get total efficiency close to diesel, maintenance windows might be more frequent though.

This thread tells how you can run some jet engines on gasoline, though some pumps need to take that into account since it doesn't lubricate as well as kerosene. https://www.airliners.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=751755

[infamia]

> The energy price predicament is that below $80/barrel, shale and tight producers can't make money (and there will be no further investment) and above $80 and the rest of the economy gets killed.

The numbers you cite aren't anywhere close to correct. U.S. Shale Oil producers were making money at $60/barrel when OPEC was trying to squeeze them out a few years back. Their break even price is about $50/barrel (i.e nowhere near $80 as claimed).

https://www.statista.com/statistics/748207/breakeven-prices-...

http://theamericanenergynews.com/energy-news/column-us-shale...

[jillesvangurp]

Regarding bunker oil, there are ships under construction that will use hydrogen instead of bunker oil. Also interesting is that while large ships burn bunker oil, they do so to power a generator that powers an electrical engine. This is true for modern oil tankers and large container ships.

So, it's not that inevitable that ships will continue to use bunker oil forever. Also, there is a company in the US already selling synthetic fuels to airline companies. I think there was a plane that recently flew with one engine burning that stuff. And finally, battery electric trucks of basically all sizes are now being produced and are shipping in small volumes. Diesel demand is on a slow decline. There is of course some debate on whether hydrogen will play a role in that. IMHO, the early signs are that it is basically not going to be a big role for at least trucking. It works, but has bout 4x the energy cost. Which is not a great value proposition when batteries basically get the job done already.

The challenge with oil is not so much the price but the fact that it keeps changing wildly unpredictably and that these swings seem to be getting more common. Those wilds swings are very damaging to industries that depend on those prices either being high (like shale oil) or low (any company that buys oil or gas in large quantities). Prices can be abnormally high or low for months/years on end if e.g. the Saudis or the Russians decide to flood the market with oil or decide to limit supply when that suits them. The US is only energy independent when prices are very high. And as you note, even then it needs to import oil because not all oil is alike.

High prices are very damaging to economies since you get things like inflation getting out of control when people suddenly have to pay a premium to heat their houses, drive their cars, or have stuff trucked around. I'm including natural gas here as it seems the prices for both oil and gas seem to be suffering from this. And of course it is an important thing that shale oil drilling produces in large quantities as well. And we are seeing quite a bit of inflation lately because of the high prices.

These price swings will drive demand destruction over time and far more rapidly than some people in the industry seem to hope/think. People will want to isolate themselves from supply and pricing issues. That's already happening. People put solar and batteries in their home because they can and to shield themselves from extortion level pricing and blackouts. The higher the prices, the more you will see people try to work around that.

The transport section will largely not be dependent on oil or gas by mid this century. Road traffic probably by the end of next decade. With about half new cars being electric by the end of this decade. That's just extrapolating from growth plans of various manufacturers. At this pace, they'll hit 50% of the market in about 8-10 years. A 50% drop in demand is going to be tough if you have investments in companies that 1) rely on high oil prices and 2) depend on things like gasoline and diesel sales to continue to be a thing that economies spend a lot of money on. Most investors are already voting with their feet because they know this is happening.

[iso1631]

> The challenge with oil is not so much the price but the fact that it keeps changing wildly unpredictably and that these swings seem to be getting more common. Those wilds swings are very damaging to industries that depend on those prices either being high (like shale oil) or low (any company that buys oil or gas in large quantities).

Isn't that the point of futures contracts - to smooth variable prices?

[davedx]

Yes - there are a number of financial instruments that large producers and consumers can and do use to hedge their risk. It's not necessarily easy and doesn't always work, and everything has a cost, but these claims of high oil "destroying the economy" (without providing any evidence) are a bit overblown.

[jillesvangurp]

Doesn't seem to be working that well lately.

[Gwypaas]

> Regarding bunker oil, there are ships under construction that will use hydrogen instead of bunker oil. Also interesting is that while large ships burn bunker oil, they do so to power a generator that powers an electrical engine. This is true for modern oil tankers and large container ships.

That is not the case. They are often direct drive through a reversible engine for maximum efficiency without any clutches and the most minimal gearbox possible. The engines themselves tend to be low rpm ultra-long stroke two-stroke diesel engines. They often even have shaft generators to shut down the smaller more inefficient generators. This further forces a set design speed to have the correct electrical frequency.

Ferries, off-shore vessels and cruise ships are increasingly becoming diesel electric though due to both large electrical loads and larger variations in load due to their operational patterns.