The global economy is addict to fossil fuel. So fossil fuel like any powerful drugs that is in limited supply (limited resource), it is threatening the global economy, if we continue to use it OR if we stop to use it.
We need a withdraw plan. Where we shift usage from fossil fuel to other energies (hopefully less damaging for environment, and more sustainable).
People asking to cut the production without a plan are as dangerous than people who are asking to keep using fossil fuel.
Right now, most container sea traffic is going around Cape Horn rather than risking the Red Sea. China is working on the Belt and Road scheme to move container traffic from China to Europe to rail.
Isn't rail shipping far more expensive than, er, ships? Also, good luck getting anything from China to Europe via rail without going through either Iran (the Middle East) or Russia (not exactly on friendly terms with Europe at the moment, to put it lightly).
it's more expensive, but they are getting closer. 30+ days by ship vs 10 days by rail, insurance, inflation and other risks. It could be just 2x more expensive. For high and mid added value product it doesn't matter much.
I can imagine year 2060 when there is a magnetic rail link between Asia and Europe. Only some commodities like wheat go through Suez.
The Belt and Road maps I've seen are pretty low resolution, are they still going through Iran? Because I'd think that counts as "middle east", even if it's not the Suez.
The US hasn't been dependent on Middle East crude oil for some years. We still maintain security guarantees there to support key allies, and contain hostile foreign powers, but that will gradually fade away as part of the foreign policy pivot to Asia. European countries need to get moving on rebuilding expeditionary military forces in order to ensure reliable energy supplies (the notion that they can quickly transition to green energy is a total fantasy).
We are dependent in as much as gas prices going up 50 cents would cause widespread riots apparently. So yes, we are no longer getting 70% of our oil from Saudi Arabia so they can quite simply hold us by the balls, but we are still desperate to keep the rest of the world's oil supply flowing regularly so that we can keep our own internal prices "American friendly".
Think how far along we would have been had Reagan not been a contrarian asshole who took brand new solar panels off the whitehouse just because. The man signed off on he SuperConducting-SuperCollider because he understood how valuable science investment was, then promptly ignored that for national energy policy because his friends preferred to get rich.
US gasoline prices are only somewhat linked to global crude oil prices because we lifted the export ban in 2015. If domestic prices get high enough to cause major political problems then the export ban can simply be reinstated.
and frankly the more poorly informed western elites try to protest and prevent extraction and distribution of western (i.e. Canada, USA) oil and gas, the more dependent we will all be on oil from places like Saudi and Russia.
Oil isn't easily replaced, though. It's not just energy, there are all the products derived from it. If you shut it off suddenly, things would collapse.
Doesn't mean we shouldn't try to replace it, but if we had easy replacement we wouldn't have these problems in the first place.
Most key minerals are mined in resource-rich countries such as Australia, Chile and the Democratic Republic of Congo, and handled by a few major companies.
Governments in Europe and the United States have bold public sector initiatives to develop domestic battery supply chains, but the majority of the supply chain is likely to remain Chinese through 2030.
For example, 70% of battery production capacity announced for the period to 2030 is in China.
Note: that's "majority owned by Chinese companies" not "entirely within the country of China".
Indeed (though neither is the USA itself), however you have to try quite hard to damage a battery in a way that means recycling it at end of life is harder than extracting raw elements from rocks in the ground, so a steady-state battery setup is much less vulnerable than the 20th century setup for oil… provided there's sufficient will to actually build the recycling plants and manufacturing capability in most nations, and it's much too early to see how that plays out given the current scale of operations.
Similar arguments also apply to PV cells and wind turbines.
"Endangers global security" often is treated as equivalent to "endangers the status quo", especially by the organizations and people who are powerful right now and so usually benefit from whatever the current situation is, as opposed to those who feel they lack power and thus are motivated to shake things up with a hope of ending up at the top afterwards.
And change tautologically does endanger the status quo. So proceeding with business as usual with perhaps a slow gradual shift would always be seen as the safe choice, and rapidly abandoning oil would be perceived as dangerous, no matter what harm or risks oil is causing.
What happens when the wealth ends for the Middle East? That could go very very badly.
It’s going to happen though. Even if climate change and pollution and all other ill effects didn’t exist we’d run out at some point and be in the same place.
Depends, United Arab Emirates nowadays makes more money from tourism than oil. Oil is like 1% of their GDP.
Climate change is accelerated, but it’s a natural process. We are literally still in Ice Age, just in
interglacial period.
The UAE has the potential to become another Singapore if they want to. But to make that work they'll have to reach a mutual accommodation with Iran while also not pissing off their other allies too much. It's going to be difficult to thread that needle.
... I mean to I guess that is -- without oil we'd have an order of magnitude less food and no means of waging war at scale. So the world would be more "secure" in the sense that we probably couldn't wage war across the globe. That said, we'd be starving and far more isolated.
I think I roughly guess if you're using electrolyticly generated hydrogen to make ammonia it'd take about 10kwh/kg of electricity. If you can get wholesale renuabes at $0.05/kwh that'd be about $0.50/kg energy cost.
Wholesale ammonia prices are about $0.30/kg.
A lot of that wholesale price is natural gas. You can see the relation here.
If you dig at industry press releases you see a lot of interest in using renewables to generate hydrogen to make ammonia. Which says the above is on track that it's economic. And also shields manufacturers from natural gas price swings. Not to mention you can locate plants anywhere.
Tractors run on diesel fuel, the trucks that move the grain run on diesel, the trains typically run on diesel, the ships typically run on diesel. The plant that processes it into food runs on coal or natural gas, or possibly some hydro power or nuclear. The bag that stores the food comes from natural gas (sometimes oil). Then that package is shipped to a store using diesel. The store powers its lights (also made from a polymer from natural gas) via natural gas generators.
One of fertilizers you point out is ammonia comes as a product from natural gas & it's the only current viable way to do it commercially, at scale.
Sure one day, we may replace all these components, but in-reality it's not anywhere close to being replaced.
How long before we diversify our technology to not be ham strung by oil anymore? If it's a security risk to not have it then it's a security risk relying on it so heavily.
Petrochem is an economical hydra, with heads in just about every industry imaginable from agricultural to pharmaceutical to packaging. It will be one hell of an endeavor to wean ourselves off of oil, but it needs to be done.
I agree completely. But our infrastructure, particularly agricultural infrastructure in the US and around the world, depends on a lot of fossil fuels. We should reduce that risk as soon as possible. But electric cars and wind plants aren't enough to do it alone.
Who would imagine that the industry that has pushed propaganda about the recyclability of oil-derived plastic would push propaganda about alternative fuel sources?
One thing is true: U.S. natural gas production was critical for EU survival after Russian gas cuts and is still critical for survival of EU support for Ukraine. If not the increase in U.S. supplies, EU won't hold out for long having to buy gas elsewhere as prices won't at all be affordable.
I don't think it makes sense intentionally suppressing fossil fuels production. The way renewables are developing now, they'll start seriously displacing fossil fuels by themselves. The green mania must be over, renewables are at a point they can survive and grow by themselves without being artificially propped and prioritised.
>“Renewable sources have a role to play, but oil and natural gas will be needed for decades,”
Which is true. Coal won't. It's time to end coal. It is possible and beneficial both economically and politically. Oil will stay around for decades no matter what; natural gas for the time being is even beneficial for energy transition and suppressing it is the last thing we need to do.
>“But [the industry] is trying to expand the fossil fuel system, expand pipelines, expand fracking, and make more of our economy and our existence dependent on fossil fuels, even though clean energy is advancing at a rapid rate.”
So good, let them both advance at a rapid rate and see who wins.
>renewables are at a point they can survive and grow by themselves without being artificially propped and prioritised.
Yet oil was at that phase over a hundred years ago.....and we still to this day prop up O&G companies with massive tax breaks and other benefits.
I'm all for cutting resources to Green Energy to make it more able to stand on its own economically. But we MUST do that for Oil as well, and thinking that we don't spend insane amounts of money securing oil (think wars) and developing its efficiency is just crazy. I'm all for spending the same amount $$-wise on Green energy as we have oil.
Oil was given plenty of time and money to develop into the industry it is. Green energy should be given the same.
> Globally, fossil fuel subsidies were $7 trillion in 2022 or 7.1 percent of GDP.... Differences between efficient prices and retail fuel prices are large and pervasive, for example, 80 percent of global coal consumption was priced at below half of its efficient level in 2022. [1]
Fossil fuels will die a lot quicker if we stop subsiding them to the tune of 7% of global GDP, i.e. 7% of all economic activity globally is redirected to make fossil fuels cheaper. To put it yet another way, if you work 250 days/year (50 weeks, 5 days/week), then 17.5 days of your work is redirected to make fossil fuels cheaper.
Nearly all of that "subsidy" is the lack of taxation of the negative externalities of fossil fuels. Even fossil fuel propaganda isn't this disingenuous with the way it frames things. That's like saying that fossil fuels are under-subsidized by trillions of dollars because they are used to power hospitals and can be used to power hospitals in Africa.
Depends on your political values. Many people think it is mandatory for governments to directly tax products with large negative externalities enough to price in those externalities. If a fossil fuel extraction system poisons a river, that needs to be priced in. If the government fails to tax what is mandatorily society's due, then it is a subsidy. Because we have to pay for the poisoned river in other ways.
> fossil fuels are under-subsidized by trillions of dollars because they are used to power hospitals
Nope. Governments/patients pay hospitals for their services, then hospitals pay power companies the market price for their services.
Renewables can lose subsidies when fossil fuel externalities are baked into their prices. Until then, full steam ahead until the last gallon or BTU is burned.
Without oil and gas and coal (meaning - if they all disappear today), modern world as it looks today ceases to exist. The death toll would probably be in the billions, and standard of living for people who survive could be potentially worse than in middle ages. So yeah, fossil fuels are essential to our security.
The most unfortunate thing about oil in the US will be that these companies will eventually go bankrupt and tax payers will be left to clean up the environmental mess the leave behind at the wells.
Which is really the same as tax payers cleaning up the mess they failed to prevent by regulating these companies and our impact on the environment in the first place.
It's interesting to see the perspective divide. The other perspective I often see is generational, The Boomers are out making tons of money ruining the environment and Gen Z+ will have to spend their lives undoing the harm caused.
Oil wouldn't be so vital if we had massive numbers of nuclear power plants generating excess energy that could be used to form long carbon chain materials for plastics etc.
Oil is without a doubt vital for parts of the world today.
I would say a large part.
Which is probably why Biden, (who signed the Paris agreement again
and supported COP28) has the US is producing
more oil than any other country on the planet.
Given that 2/3 of the oil production in the US comes from fracking
it is one of the worst ways to produce oil that is in current use.
If not the worst.
"No more drilling no more on federal land"
Except when there is money to be made.
This isn’t news, big oil has been bankrolling lobbyists across the globe to maintain their position via fear mongering about “global security”. There were several wars fought over oil in the past three decades, in fact.
Somewhat related, I remember thinking why exactly anyone would want to become a lobbyist for an oil company. Money? Probably. Even though you end up polluting the very same earth you live and breath on as everyone else. I then stumbled across this reddit post not to long ago
As of now, fossil fuel is crucial for national security. The whole economy runs on fossil fuel.
But fossil fuel has 2 main drawbacks:
1. Contribute to global warming
2. It takes millions of years to produce, and few days to consume (aka limited resource)
So, we need to adapt the economy to those 2 drawbacks. Even if one thinks that global warming is not an issue, then the fact that it is a limited resource is going to eventually kick in (coal, oil and gas peak).
In the current economy, any drastic change of fossil fuel price would end in chaos. That is the threat. The sooner we minimize our dependance on fossil fuel, the better.
In some industries, we would need fossil fuels for a long time as it is difficult to replace them (e.g. fertilizers, plastics). in some other industries (transportation, heating), we can substitute fossile fuels with other energies (e.g electricity generated using renewable or nuclear).
So, yes it is a matter of national security, and that is why we need to adapt our economy to use less fossil fuel. And obviously we need to extract fossil fuel, as long as we can, during that transition.
National security or global security just means it’s necessary to maintain the status quo. If needed, in sure we could get off oil in a matter of a decade or less, but it’s just easier to use oil and not work so hard to get off of it. You don’t have to explain how we’re dependent on oil to me, anyways, dependencies being a national security threat is a failure of political leadership for decades and decades now. We should have been off oil in the 80s or 90s after the crisis in the 70s, but instead we just paid off powerful men in the Middle East with weapons and kicked the can.
Everything that we wear (plastic) or eat (fertilizers, and farming, trucking) comes from fossil fuel. Oil is everywhere. It is going to take a while to withdraw from our addiction.
> We should have been off oil in the 80s or 90s after the crisis in the 70s...
Oil is a fr(e)aking miracle. It is virtually free (just drill), it is energy dense, easy to transport, it makes fertilizers which allowed to fed the planet with less fields, it makes plastic, etc.
The countries fortunate enough to have some in their underground, have a natural printing money machine.
But, it is a limited resource, and using it at the scale we have been doing in the past 100 years, is impacting the environment.
> but instead we just paid off powerful men in the Middle East with weapons and kicked the can.
I agree that we kept kicking the can. But fortunately (or unfortunately if we are not prepared) it will eventually come to an end. It takes million of years to produce oil, and we consume it faster and faster. There will a time, where we would not find the easy oil, and it would become more and more expensive to find. If we are not prepared, then chaos will follow (wars as the last countries that have access to oil will keep it for them, economies will collapse as worldwide trade will break, etc.)
Clearly the past 100 years have been golden thanks to oil. We need to build a future where oil would be less abundant and more expensive.
It's only a pity that most policies fall under either one or the other extreme. You suggest keeping fossils and further develop renewals until they can safely take over? Well this exact position will get most hate from both sides, thus being also the least likely to be implemented - regardless how logic and realistic it might be.
It might not be voluntary decided, but it is more a less happening. renewable is used more and more, and nuclear is getting more interest lately.
Lots of countries are putting incentives to electrify their economy, which is a necessary first step to later switch to renewable and nuclear (and ditch coal or gas).
People want Green energy resources to be slashed? I'm all for it, once we spend roughly the same amount of time and money we've dedicated to developing oil.
Between wars to secure oil, excessive industry tax breaks, etc, I wouldn't doubt the cost to get oil to where it is today is in the tens (if not hundreds) of trillions of dollars.
Here's a small summary of just some of the subsidies they recieve, from a bill that was introduced[0] to limit them. These are over and above other types of deductions all businesses take advantage of tax wise
- Tax credits specifically for producing oil and gas from maringal wells and oil discovery
- Tax deductions for drilling and development cost of oil and gas wells
- Passive loss exceptions for working interests in oil and gas property (think dry wells)
- Removes exceptions for tar sands and oil shale[1]
These are just some. Then there's the second order costs, like how much of our defense budget is geared toward simply protecting oil tankers[2] specifically.
> Most states have maintained methane release exemptions from these taxes through either statute or administrative discretion between 1960 and 2000, although a few have allowed some form of pricing. Two state legislatures have explored applying these taxes to methane releases on multiple occasions since 2000, amid expanded shale era output and growing public concern about climate and air quality impacts. Steadfast production industry opposition, rather than technical feasibility, emerges as the primary factor leading to rejection in these cases. Even when framing releases as a conventional air contaminant or as permanent loss of a nonrenewable natural resource, states largely continue to exempt flared or vented methane from severance taxes.
> On Tuesday, November 7th, Texas voters decisively endorsed Proposition 7, overwhelmingly supporting establishing a one-billion-dollar state-managed energy fund to enhance the infrastructure of natural gas power plants. The primary objective of this fund is to fortify the infrastructure of natural gas power plants throughout the state.
Texas just passed a law providing billions for energy resilience that specifically excluded spending it on renewables.
> The Texas House of Representatives has given its approval to a new bill as a substitute for the Chapter 313 tax break. However, it explicitly excludes renewable energy companies from its provisions
They are most definitely correct. If, right now, all oil stopped flowing, many people would die. Oil is needed for bulk transport across the seas, in the air, and over land. It is needed for agricultural production, and a decent amount of electrical generation. Adding to that, almost all war machinery requires it in rather large quantities.
Then, there's plastic. I hate the use of plastics for many things, but there are some things for which it is absolutely essential. For example, there are many medical uses of plastics that save lives and restore bodily function.
> For example, there are many medical uses of plastics that save lives and restore bodily function.
Plastics also are very useful for mundane health and safety type items, because they can be low cost, impermeable, and durable. Plastic medical equipment is often safer than glass because it can be thrown away instead of reused. It also makes the equipment more accessible in lower income areas.
Eliminating all oil is just as silly of an idea as using oil for everything. There are some things it does well and some things that we can do better a different way.
Cheap and abundant energy is strongly correlated with prosperity. Every barrel of oil produces roughly 1,700 kWh of thermal energy. In countries with low cost of oil production like Saudi Arabia and Iran, that means electricity generation for less than $0.01/kWh. The only viable technology to compete with oil and gas over the long term is Nuclear.
There's a surprising number of people who think 'Just Stop Oil' is a reasonable slogan, so maybe it does.
(If the slogan was 'Gradually Replace Oil', almost everybody would agree, there'd be no excuse to block roads, throw paint around though, and earn attention and social media cred, though)
They’re not wrong and it’s a timing thing. It isn’t as if this is a new message for them. But a big ad spend reinforcing their talking points during an election year is how they try to move the needle to protect their interests politically.