J00 Table of Content
J01
The
Cost of
Gasoline
J02
A Little History
J03
Will We Run Out of Oil
J04
It's Crunch
Time
J05
What We Should Do
J06
A Little Knowledge includes my first oil spill
J07
A Little Ignorance
J08
There is No Need
J09
The Politics of Denial
J10
Some Caveats
J11
Some Comments
J12
Line 5 includes my second
oil spill
J13
Plastic
J14
Water Reclamation at Total's Alma refinery includes My third oil
spill
J15
Dynamic Risk Criticism
J16
A Pipeline Through Afghanistan!
J17
Why
conserve
Return to Index
Table of Content
A10J01 The Cost of Gasoline
Yes, America you are being ripped off
by the oil companies, but before I qualify my statement, some
knowledge about costs is needed. Let me start with the price of
gasoline in Michigan. Divide the spot price of crude oil by 42,
multiply by 1.04 and add 76 cents, then multiply by 1.06 (MI sales
tax) and if you are paying more than ten cents above that amount you
are being ripped off.
For those who live another state, subtract
MI state taxes of $.19875 from $.76 and add your state gasoline tax
to the remainder and use the result in place of $.76 in the above
calculation, also replace the 1.06 with your state sales tax
rate.
The above calculation may require the following qualifiers.
For example, I live in Mackinaw City and shop in Cheboygan and
Petoskey. In Cheboygan, each winter we pay more for gasoline than in
Petoskey, but we pay less in the summer. Why?
Because when the
Straits freeze the oil tankers cannot transport oil to Cheboygen and
all oil must be trucked from either Traverse City or Bay City. In
addition, when the boats can pass through the broken ice in the
Spring and Fall the insurance rates on the boats quadruple increasing
the cost of transportation during those times.
Pipelines are the
cheapest way to ship oil followed by boats, rail tank cars, and the
most expensive way is by truck. The cost also increases with
increasing distance, a fact that most people ignore for some unknown
reason, when considering the price of gasoline at different
locations. Plus they ignore the different state gasoline taxes and
sales taxes.
All the facilities and activities of the oil industry
are expensive, a million dollars is considered small change and
service stations are probably the least expensive and off shore
drilling the most expensive for a single unit. Most people can not
even contemplate the size of the numbers commonly used in the oil
industry. At the same time most people would be surprised that very
small numbers can decide the location of oil facilities.
Bigger is
not always better, to big means economically infeasible. At sixty
three dollars per barrel of crude oil the price per gallon is $1.50,
now would you change how you shipped crude oil to save $.0001 per
gallon?
When the Alaskan North Slope field was developed $.0001
per gallon was the deciding factor. The oil industry wanted to build
a pipeline down the east side of the Rockies. The inventory cost, the
interest on the oil in the pipeline, was the deciding factor.
Remember, the oil in the pipeline can never be removed and someone
must pay for the oil in the line. Once the line is full then you can
remove as much as you put in.
At that time the inventory costs of
a pipeline down the east side of the Rockies would have cost
$5,000,000 more a year than the alternative. The pipeline capacity
was to be 3,000,000 barrels per day, so lets do the calculation.
5,000,000 divided by 3,000,000, then divide by 42, then divide by 365
days per year and the saving is $.0001087 per gallon.
The oil
industry is driven by fractions of cent per gallon because of the
astronomical volumes we consume each and every day in this country.
Most people have no concept as to how large the numbers are.
I
retired in '88 so I don't have access to what I consider reliable
numbers and must rely on my memory. The last numbers that I remember
is that only three oil producing countries have any appreciable
excess capacity Iran, Russia, and Saudi all the rest are at maximum
and/or have declining production.
All of the oil producing
countries were deficit spending prior to the last major increase in
crude oil prices. On a per person basis their entitlement programs
make ours look puny. Every oil producing country needs every dollar
they can get and they finally learned that they can get more money by
increasing the price of oil rather than by selling more.
Besides
if they can't produce more they can't sell more.
We can't control
our own destiny, we have no control over the price of oil.
Return to Oil table of contents
The first oil well in the US was
drilled in 1859 in PA, but the oil industry didn't really begin until
after the big strikes in OK and TX and the wide spread use of the
automobile. Smaller fields were discovered in KA, OH, WY, and MI and
a large field in Southern CA. After WWII off shore fields were
discovered in the Gulf and off Southern CA and later the North Slope
field in Alaska was developed.
The first refineries were built
near the oil fields because transportation was lacking and the
refineries were inefficient and consumed about ten per cent of the
oil; therefore, it was cheaper to ship the finished product long
distances than to ship the oil long distances and the finished
product a short distance. Even though modern refineries are much more
efficient the same economics still holds.
The transportation of
oil evolved from shipment in wood barrels on a wagons, on rail box
cars, on trucks; to tanker trucks, to rail tank cars, to boats, to
pipelines, and to ocean super tankers carrying 2 million barrels of
oil. Oil was first shipped in forty gallon wood barrels by wagons and
box cars. The story has it that the buyers were complaining that they
didn't receive forty gallons because the barrels leaked, so the
sellers began putting two extra gallons in each wooden barrel so the
buyers wouldn't complain. The barrel remained at forty two gallons
even after steel barrels replaced the wood barrels.
When I first
began tracking crude oil production and finished product consumption
in 1964, the US produced 12.1 million barrels a day and consumed 13.3
million barrels a day. World oil consumption was about 28 million
barrels a day. Until the first oil embargo (1967) we never paid more
than $1.25 a barrel for imported crude oil and most of the time much
less.
US production rose slightly as new fields were developed,
but old wells were being depleted faster than new wells were being
brought into production so our production went below 6 million
barrels a day even with the North Slope and off shore oil.
Our
consumption rose to 19.6 million barrels a day before and dropped to
16.7 after the second oil embargo (1973). World oil consumption was
about 40 million barrels a day. World consumption was 80 million
barrels a day '74 and 100 million in '08 and has remained near
there.
Our crude oil consumption has remained about 20 million
barrels a day because natural gas has replaced heating oil and heavy
fuel oil in homes and industry so the oil industry has been importing
much more finished product (gasoline and heating oil) from over
seas.
It's cheaper to import than to convert heating oil and heavy
fuel into gasoline and since we must import to meet our demand it's
cheaper to import the product to the location of the customer than to
import the crude oil and refine it and then ship it to the
customer.
Do you realize how much oil we use every day, almost 20
million barrels, that's 840 million gallons. The number is
staggering. To put it in more personal terms, we consume 3 gallons of
oil every day for every person in our country. Remember, we don't
consume every gallon personally. Our distribution system and
industries must use oil to deliver all the goods and services we
expect each day, we must count the oil used by all of our trucks,
trains, planes, cabs, etc. in our consumption total.
Geography
determines how oil is shipped. Mountains and large bodies of water
make pipelines economically infeasible. The east and west coasts have
very few pipelines and have the highest shipping costs. Because of
the mountains and the lack of pipelines crossing them, oil can NOT be
moved freely any where in the nation.
Because of this limitation
the oil industry divides the nation into three areas, the east coast,
the west coast, and mid continent. Each area is for all practical
reasons completely isolated from the others. This isolation places
severe economic penalties when shipping oil to meet demand in each
area.
'Not in my back yard' also plays a very important role in
determining the location of oil facilities. No new refineries have
been built since the '70's and no new pipelines have been built
except along existing right of ways. Electric power transmission
lines have the same problem, natural gas pipelines have had more
success in obtaining right of ways because people prefer gas to oil
or electricity.
I laugh when politicians say, 'We need more
refineries.' More is not better, more will not solve the problem. Why
build more refineries or any oil facility if we have to import crude
oil to meet our needs, it's cheaper to import finished products.
Besides, and even more important, the oil industry knows we don't
need more facilities, if we conserve we could reduce our imports by 4
million barrels a day, maybe more. And most important of all, why
build any facility that will only be used for less than ten years,
oil production will be at a maximum by then and we will be forced to
conserve.
That's why I'm disgusted with our politicians, they are
not leading, they don't even understand the problem and refuse to
learn. I have written my congressmen and senators since 64 and
mostly, the only response I get is a form letter.
When I first
joined Leonard Refineries in 59, Michigan had more than eight
refineries, today it has one. Then Michigan produced thirty six
thousand barrels a day, today less than four thousand. Now do you
think there is a correlation here, 'little or no crude oil production
means few refineries'?
The refineries were small, only one refined
more than eight thousand barrels a day. As the wells became
unprofitable, the refineries closed and sold their assets to other
oil companies.
Remember, it takes energy to get energy, a well
must pump enough oil to pay for the electricity, gas, or diesel fuel
to pump the oil, an operator to check on the well and perform routine
maintenance, the fuel for the truck and a driver to transport the oil
from the well to gathering pipelines, to pay for the lease of the
well site, etc. This does not include the capital costs, seismic work
to find the drill site, the cost of drilling the well, pipe,
pipelines, or any of the equipment needed. When a well does not cover
the operating costs it will be shut down and the lease forfeited.
As
long as a well and / or a field pumps enough oil to cover operating
costs, it will be operated in the hope of recovering the capital
costs. This is the case of the North Slope field. This field has been
a major disappointment, it never produced its projected quantity and
the wells are depleting much faster than anticipated.
This is why
the oil companies involved want to drill in the Arctic National Wild
Life Refuge. With additional wells they might recover their capital
investment in the Alaskan pipeline or at least get a better return on
their investment if the price increases in crude oil has not provided
the necessary return already. Here is a case where I side with the
oil companies. My argument goes like this: once resources have been
spend I like to see them used to the fullest extent. The Alaskan
pipeline is already there, lets use it, but don't be overly
optimistic about the amount of oil produced from the Arctic National
Wild Life Refuge, I have a gut feeling that it will be just as
disappointing as the North Slope field.
The oil industry can
produce oil with minimum impact on the environment. Yes, there will
be spills, accidents, and mistakes, this is a risk I think is worth
taking. Besides, why are we so concerned with preserving small pieces
of land when we are unwilling to preserve the whole world by not
reducing our consumption of fossil fuels.
To me this piece meal
approach is, just, plain stupid and a waste of resources. I mean it's
like a doctor treating a patient with a life threatening leg
infection saying, 'The patient died, but I saved his leg'. We must
reduce our population and our use of fossil fuels or we will become
extinct, it's a matter of when, not if. And I want my grandchildren
to have a chance.
The first refineries produced only two products,
lamp kerosene and wagon axle grease, a very small portion of the
crude oil. With the rest of the barrel, what they didn't burn as
fuel, they dumped on the ground. Thus began some very bad habits and
a very bad reputation, not to mention the environmental damage. If
the early refiners and drillers had been more careful, 'Not in my
backyard' would not be such a powerful force against new petroleum
facilities.
In 59 the US had 52 integrated oil companies and many
non integrated oil companies. Integrated means that the company does
all four activities required, production, pipeline, refine, and
market. When I retired in '88 only twenty six integrated oil
companies were left, today even less. I don't know the exact number,
but would guess at eight.
Leonard refineries bought three small
refineries, the rest were shut down and scrapped. Then CFP bought
Leonard and merged it with a production company in Canada and changed
the name to Total Petroleum (North America). More acquisitions and
increases in refining capacity brought Total to forty two thousand
barrels a day. Modern refineries have at least two hundred fifty
thousand barrels per day of capacity.
More acquisitions nearly
tripled Total's refining capacity. Total's MI refinery was shut down
because it was to small and not economical. In my opinion part of the
blame lies with our bureaucrats and politicians. The MI refinery
processed Canadian asphaltic crude. The bureaucrats and politicians
in their infinite wisdom, screwed up our energy relationship with
Canada and Canada would not sell Total any asphaltic crude. When the
MI refinery could no longer make asphalt, its economic days were
numbered. Later, Delmar Diamond Shamrock bought Total and later
another oil company bought them.
Michigan is a microcosm of the
oil industry. Michigan is surrounded by water, with little crude oil
production, with a large demand for finished product, with two crude
oil pipe lines (both coming from and going to Canada) and two product
pipe lines with three terminals and five boat terminals. That means
all products must be trucked from the terminals to customers, very
expensive. The average per gallon-mile was 56 miles, remember the
truck has to return. Also, the average is small because the majority
of the consumption is in large metropolian areas which have the
shortest distance.
The east coast does not have any oil fields, so
obviously all crude oil must be shipped to the refineries by boat or
pipeline. Since the number of pipelines crossing the mountains are
few and the size of the pipe small, most of the crude oil is brought
in by boat.
'Not in my back yard' severely restricts the number of
refineries on the east coast so a large share of gasoline and heating
oil is shipped in from refineries over seas making the east coast
vulnerable to price changes and inventory constraints.
The west
coast has similar constraints with one big exception, the Los Angeles
basin oil fields. For many years these oil fields have supplied all
of the west coast needs. As demand grew it was cheaper to import
crude oil and products across the Pacific because only the smallest
tankers can pass through the Panama canal and the only pipeline
across the southern desert was very small. It's cheaper to import
than to build bigger pipelines or a bigger canal.
Since the north
slope production was greater than the west coast demand and with no
economic way to transport the crude to the mid continent, the oil
industry shipped the Alaskan oil to Japan and exchanged it for OPEC
oil to be delivered to the gulf coast. Certainly, Japan gets cheaper
oil than if they bought OPEC oil directly, but would you do it for
nothing?
From an oil perspective, the mid continent is a country
unto itself. Since most of our crude oil production is in the mid
continent, that is where most of our refineries, pipelines, and other
oil facilities are. It's also the area with the lowest costs.
Since
refineries require large amounts of cooling water, most refineries
are built near large bodies of water, cooling towers are more
expensive, so most of our refining capacity is on or near the gulf
coast. Which in turn makes the gulf coast the most economical place
to import crude oil. Costs increase with distance from the gulf.
The
oil industry tries to maintain about seven days of inventory and can
go as low as a three day supply or as high as ten days without
economic penalty. This does not include the inventory available at
high use industries, such as, airlines, trucking, rail, farm storage,
etc. Since oil consumption is very predictable, the oil industry
tries to maintain a minimum inventory to meet demand to keep the cost
of inventory low.
At over sixty dollars a barrel, inventory costs
are very high. To give you an idea of how large the problem is
consider the following. We consumed 21 million barrels in'74, that is
one billion two hundred sixty thousand dollars a day. One penny per
gallon is 882 million dollars a day.
To meet our consumption
demand we must import six or seven super tankers every day. Each
super tanker holds about 2 million barrels. Not very many people have
ever seen a 100,000 barrel storage tank. These tanks vary in size,
but most are over 130 feet in diameter and over 30 feet high. Four of
them could be placed in a standard city block. That means that five
city blocks would be needed to hold the crude oil delivered by one
super tanker and thirty five city blocks would be need to hold the
amount of crude oil we consume in one day and 254 city blocks would
be needed to hold a seven day supply.
Someone said, 'I heard the
oil industry has 23 years of oil stored'. Obviously the person who
made that comment has no clue, but most people do not comprehend how
much oil we burn in our country because the numbers are beyond their
experience. Currently we are burning more than 17 million barrels a
day. At $50 a barrel that is $850,000,000 a day we burn.
One
square mile can hold 576 100,000 barrel tanks with their containment
dikes and service roads which is almost a 3.4 day supply. To store
one year's supply would require 107 square miles of storage tanks. 23
years of storage would require 2, 461 square miles of storage at a
cost of $7,135,750,000,000 at $50 a barrel and this does not include
the cost of the tanks, pumps, motors, pipe or the land.
Not even
our government can afford to spend that amount of money to store 23
years of oil.
I have heard people say speculators in the futures
market are driving up the the price of oil.
A futures is a
contract, a piece of paper, it has an expiration date to sell a
quantity of a commodity at some time in the future. Because of the
time function all futures sell at a premium above the spot market
price, but when the expiration date arrives the futures price will be
the same as the spot market price and the seller must deliver the oil
or buy back his contract. The spot price at expiration determines who
makes a profit, the buyer or the seller. Speculators can buy and sell
many more contracts than there is oil available and they can drive
the price of the futures up or down, but the price of the futures has
no effect on the spot market because at expiration date if the seller
can not buy back his contract he will be forced to buy the commodity
on the spot market to full fill his contract.
The spot market is
where people go to buy and sell oil. The traders on the spot market
are only concerned with the price that people are willing to pay for
oil or to sell oil, now, not some time in the future. You can bet
your bottom dollar that the traders on the futures market are paying
very close attention to the spot market not the other way around.
The
oil industry does not have enough storage to speculate in oil, so how
could anyone else speculate in oil. Besides who would have the
astronomical amount of money necessary to buy enough oil and store
it, in order to be able to speculate in oil. Futures contracts can be
bought on margin with a very small amount of money in comparison.
Hence, the speculators are in the futures market not the spot market
and they can drive the price of the piece of paper up or down, but
not the commodity.
In a country that uses so much oil why is so
little known. I blame the oil companies the most for not educating
our public followed by the gas and coal industries. Several others
must share some of the blame: the politicians, the pundits, and the
media.
Now do you have some idea about the problem we have. More
production will not solve the problem, more refineries will not solve
the problem, we cannot continue to consume crude oil at our present
rate, we will run out of space and money, not to mention the
environmental degradation.
Our government publishes a weekly crude
oil and gasoline inventory report. The comments of the pundits
following that weekly report would lead you to believe that the
inventories are at the mercy of the wind and the waves. They say such
things as 'A decline in crude oil inventories by two millions barrels
was a surprise'.
It may have been a surprise to a pundit, but you
can bet the ranch it didn't surprise the people involved in the oil
industry and why are they making such a big deal about two million
barrels, that is only one super tanker out of fifty six that must
unload every week to meet our demand. So one or two tankers arrived
to late or to early to be included in the weekly inventory, why is it
a big deal? And to imply that no one knew that a two hundred million
dollar investment was behind or ahead of schedule is more than I can
tolerate. Whole departments watch inventories and shipments like a
mother hen.
A much more realistic report would be to report
inventories in terms of 'days of supply'. It would also be a better
comparison between years. The amount of oil inventory in terms of
'days of supply' has hardly changed since I first began working in
the oil industry. If anything it has decreased because of the cost of
carrying inventory.
Do you have any idea how much oil is in
inventory and how much it costs to hold it in inventory? A little
over one week of consumption is in inventory and at $50 a barrel and
at six per cent interest the cost is over $1,000,000 a day. To that
the cost of all the infrastructure must be included, the capital cost
of all the terminals, storage tanks, refineries, service stations,
and other buildings used to carry out the industry operations, plus
the cost of all the people involved. Now we are talking millions of
dollars a day and some people are complaining about $3 a gallon
gasoline!
Another thing, do you know how long it takes for a
barrel of crude oil to go from the well to your gasoline tank? For
oil produced in the U.S., a little over three days. For oil produced
outside of the U.S. shipping time must be added. Oil from Canada,
Mexico, and Venezuela needs a day to about a week, from the Persian
Gulf about three weeks.
Now consider this, each of the large ships
hold about 2 million barrels of crude oil and because we produce less
than 8 million barrels of oil a day of our own oil, we must import
six or seven large ships of oil every day. Now if there is a
disruption in the supply of oil from any one of our sources can you
imagine what effect it would have on the supply of oil available and
the price you would have to pay because of that disruption. Also
consider changes in demand caused by price changes.
Here is an
example, the sharp price rise this spring caused people to drive less
and by June the price of gasoline began to decline. Why? Well, if six
large ships are coming into port every day that two million barrels
has to go some where. If demand changes faster than the delivery time
of the large ships, what happens to the supply. When demand dropped
by six per cent in June, the ships from the Persian Gulf were already
on their way and when they arrived, the supply of gasoline exceed
demand by 2 million barrels, so the price went down so people would
use more gasoline so the oil industry had room in storage for the
next ship. Can you imagine what would happen to the price of gasoline
if inventories were low and one of the large ships was late?
There
have been seven spikes in the cost of oil since '64. The first four
spikes caused modest increases in the price of oil. The first was
caused by a panic among the leaders of Saudi Arabia to a report about
the correlation between the amount of new oil discovered and the
amount of drill pipe required to find it. The trend indicated that no
new cheap oil would be found in the near future and they were giving
their oil away. For many years following World War Two the price of
Arabian oil never went above $1.25 a barrel. The second was caused by
closing of the Suez Canal during the middle east conflict. The third
was an attempt by OPEC to get their members to stick to their
production quotas because all of the OPEC countries had over spent on
social programs and as their populations grew their oil income fell
short of their expenditures. The fourth was the result of OPEC
actually doing what they said they would do on oil production.
Each
time there was a public out cry, "They can't do that to us; The
government should do something; The oil companies are price gouging
us." If I hadn't been laughing I would have cried at the sheer
stupidity. Shortly after the fourth price increase a friend of ours
became angry when I said what I though about the situation. She
claimed that it was all a government conspiracy to raise oil prices.
I said, "Cheap oil is not one of the Ten Commandments."
The last three spikes in the cost of oil were cause by demand being greater than supply.
Most people have no concept of the excellent job our industries and distribution companies do for us. Also, most people have no concept of how vulnerable we are to any disruption in our distribution system. Stop and think, don't you marvel at the tons of food, fuel, and supplies that arrive on time every day all over our country at very low prices. Food goes from the farm to our tables in less than two days. Gas and electricity are at our finger tips. Gasoline less than an hour away and home heating oil and propane can be delivered the same day. Clothing and other articles are available at the nearest store. True, most of the efficiency is driven by economics, but it is still a marvel.
Return to Oil table of contents
A10J03 Will We Run Out of Oil?
No, but that is the wrong question and
you already know the answer to the right question. Will we run out of
cheap oil? We already have. Will more oil be discovered? Yes, but it
will be difficult to find and recover and therefore expensive.
I
didn't realize how much I took for granted until I read 'Hubbert's
Peak', a book I recommend you read. If you have trouble with his
statistics and chemistry just keep reading, what he says in between
is very important.
Here is what I took for granted: Michigan's oil
industry began in the early 1930's. What most people do not
understand by that statement is that all the major producing fields
in the US and in fact, in the whole world, had already been
discovered, except for the North Slope, the Mexican, and Indonesian
oil fields and off shore oil fields. How can that be?
Let me use
the terms domes and bowls instead of the technical terms. Oil is not
found in caves, it is found in porous rock.
There are many very
large oil fields that produce little or no oil. Why?
Many
variables determine whether oil will flow to a well so it can be
recovered, only four will be mentioned. First, and probably the most
important, is the porosity of the rock containing the oil. If the
pores are large the rock is called loose, if the pores are very small
the rock is called tight. Some rock is so tight that oil will flow
extremely slow if at all. The Green River formation of south western
Wyoming and western Colorado and the large field in North and South
Dakota are examples. It is like trying to get oil out of an asphalt
road.
Second is the viscosity of the oil. Some oils are so viscous
they are almost solid, such as the Tar Sands of Alberta. Even high
pressure steam or fire flooding the field will barely allow the oil
to flow. Such oils make good asphalt, but very little else. Attempts
to mine this type of oil is very expensive. The oil rock is mined
like open pit coal or iron ore and crushed and fed into a oven and
heated to allow the oil to flow out of the crushed rock. But the
trucking of the oil rock to the oven, the crushing of the rock,
trucking the depleted rock to waste disposal site, and the heat need
to make the oil flow requires more oil than the rock contains. In
addition the rock changes composition such that it now requires more
space to contain it than before it was mined. No one has found a
solution to disposing of the additional rock economically.
Third
is the pressure forcing the oil to move. Most of the time water
transfers the pressure from the weight of the rock above to the oil
from below. Many oil fields also have a large amount of natural gas
above the oil between the oil and the cap that traps the oil and the
gas. Sometimes the natural gas is dissolved in the oil under high
pressure. When a well is drilled into such a formation, the oil and
gas will flow without pumping it.
Fourth is the affinity of the
rock for oil. Depending upon the chemical composition of the rock it
may attract oil or repel it. If it attracts the oil the oil will tend
to flow more slowly than if the rock repels the oil.
Proven
reserves, what a joke. I have never seen a oil well nor an oil field
ever produce its proven reserves, most of the time much less. If the
porosity of the rock or the viscosity of the oil changes with
distance from the well it may cause a change in pressure allowing
water to be drawn up into the producing layer or to allow the weight
of the rock above to collapse the layer, blocking the flow of oil to
the well. Also as the oil is removed from porous rock, the rock may
not be strong enough to hold the weight of the rock above, again
allowing the porous rock to collapse, blocking the flow of
oil.
Proven reserves are used by promoters and con men to
encourage people to invest their money in drilling wells.
Also,
the porous rock must not have been heated above 300 degrees C or
about 500 degrees F because such temperatures destroy oil and gas.
Such temperatures also change the composition of the rock allowing a
geologist to determine the temperature history of the rock. When a
core sample indicates that the 300 degree temperature has been reach,
the oil industry calls that layer the bottom and all rock below the
bottom are basement rocks. When the bottom has been reached all
drilling is terminated because no oil will be found below that point.
The rock must be sedimentary, it must be porous, it must be covered
by an imperious layer, and it must be above the bottom. This mean
that you can not drill anywhere and find oil. The location must be
very specific.
I happened to walk into the office of one of our
production people during lunch hour, he was gone, but as I turned to
walk out of his office I noticed what looked like a pie shaped piece
of fudge on his desk. I picked it up and immediately recognized that
it had been plasticized, why would anyone plasticize a piece of
fudge? After a moment's thought I realized that it was small section
of core sample from an oil well pay zone. It was also easy to see the
holes that made the rock porous.
If oil or gas is not trapped it
will come to the surface and it does in many places around the world.
The La Brea tar pits are world famous and I have heard people
returning from a cruise blame the oil industry for oil blooms on the
Gulf. What they don't know is that oil and gas seeps from the Gulf
floor all the time, that is how the off shore fields were discovered.
And close to my home, gas leaks from the Traverse formation around
Traverse City. Many water wells in the area contain natural gas.
The
best place to find the most oil is under a dome, an impervious cap
that prevents the oil and gas from coming to the surface. A trained
geologist can recognize large domes just by looking at the terrain.
With the advent of the airplane it became even easier. Then came the
seismograph which made it easier to locate bowl trapped oil. For oil
to be trapped in a bowl formation the strata must have been faulted
so that the oil saturated rock layer had moved up or down so as to
seal the faulted strata layer against an impervious rock layer.
Michigan is a bowl formation. The edges of the bowl come to the
surface all around the lakes that is why gas comes out of the ground
around Traverse City.
The other oil trapping formations are even
more difficult to find and usually the amount of oil is smaller than
dome formations. So while it is possible that more oil will be found,
the probability is very low.
Return to Oil table of contents
If all the other countries in the world
were to consume energy at our rate I hate to think of what would
happen. The consumption rate of the rest of the world is increasing
at a very fast rate. My prediction is that world consumption of crude
oil will be greater than crude oil production in five years. The
economic consequences will be devastating and worst of all the effect
will be felt long before the actual event because markets are driven
by perception and when people finally realize what is going to
happen, panic will ensue.
The Tuesday after 911 I drove to
Petoskey from Mackinaw City. I passed nine gas station on my route,
at each one cars and trucks were lined up on both sides of the road
waiting to get gas. I thought it was odd, but it became even odder
when I passed a rural station. Again, trucks and cars were lined up
on both sides of the road. Almost every vehicle was pulling a
trailer, people were filling snowmobiles, lawn mowers, out board
motor boat tanks, lawn tractors, spare gas cans, etc.
When I
returned three hours later, all the stations were closed with signs
saying 'Out of Gas'. Three station were out of gas for one day, three
were out of gas for two days, and three were out of gas for three
days. Now what would you do if you turned into a station and found a
'Out of Gas' sign?
The next day I learned that someone started an
email rumor that a refinery in Chicago had been hit by the
terrorists. Fortunately some people had enough sense to call friends
in Chicago to confirm the rumor and that was the end of that.
But
what if it had been true? What if it had been true for the whole
country? What will you do? What will we do?
Shortages will be
caused by panic hoarding long before a true shortage occurs that is
why we can't wait until the crisis comes we must act before a panic
can occur. And don't look for the politicians to do anything, they
are concerned with abortion, stem cells, prayer in school, and
terrorism. They along with most people in our country do not know the
most dangerous threat to our country. The most dangerous threat to
our country and to the world is global heating caused by oil
consumption and no one is doing any thing about it and haven't since
Jimmy Carter and look what the 'idiotologues' did to him.
It's
crunch time, a conjunction of major tsunamis will occur in 2020,
Global heating and the solar sun spot maximum with the possibility of
drought and a shortage of water, the maxing out of oil production
with sky high prices, a world population over eight billion and a
shortage of food, and the baby boomers retiring with under funded
pension plans, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, etc. Are we
ready?
Return to Oil table of contents
I record all car expenses in one column
of my expense spread sheet. Each December I record my odometer
reading for each gasoline purchase and when I receive my January
credit card statement I use the odometer reading of the last purchase
on that statement for my year end millage and subtract it from the
previous year end millage giving me my total millage for the year.
Then I use the year end car expense total and divide it by my total
millage giving me a operating cost per mile. I estimate how many
miles I will drive a car when I purchase it and divide that into the
purchase price of the new car after subtracting the sale price of my
old car giving me the capital cost of my new car per mile.
This
number is only an estimate but it is close enough without spending a
lot of time to be more accurate to determine how much it costs to
drive to make a purchase. I add the operating cost per mile to the
capital cost per mile and I then calculate the cost to my usual
destinations.
Now if you do the same you can avoid one of the most
common mistakes we make in our country. We make frequent trips to
save dimes and waste dollars driving to save them. Next time you are
about to drive to save money on a purchase, subtract the cost of
making the trip from your estimate of how much you will save.
I
have seen people spend two or more dollars on car expenses to save
fifty cents or less on a purchase. Many times you can save money by
paying a higher price by purchasing closer to home and driving a
shorter distance.
For example, you cannot afford to drive two
extra miles to save two cents a gallon when you fill your tank, it
will not even pay for the extra gasoline consumed to drive the two
extra miles and if you add in the capital cost of the vehicle you
cannot afford to drive two extra blocks.
Once you become aware of
the cost of driving it is easier to start driving smart. If you have
a choice in which vehicle you will drive always use the least cost
vehicle, do not idle your car, turn the motor off, combine trips that
are in the same direction or when the total trip is shorter than
several individual trips, coast into a stop light or stop sign, don't
drive during peak traffic times if you have a choice, etc.
Come on America, do the arithmetic and stop spending dollars to save dimes.
Return to Oil table of contents
A10J06 A Little Knowledge can be dangerous
Why is the consumption of crude oil the
most serious threat to our country? Let me set the stage.
During a
trip to the Rose Bowl with a student from Germany, I became very
aware of how many idioms, cliches, proverbs, etc., we use in our
everyday speech. We could understand her perfectly, but she could not
understand us. We were constantly interpreting our idioms, etc., for
her.
While the use of idioms, etc., is efficient, it can be very
misleading because we tend to quote only the part that supports our
position and that can lead to very lazy thinking because we do not
examine other possibilities.
For example, 'A little knowledge can
be dangerous', we use only the first verse when the second verse is
much more important and would expand our thinking.
During the time
I served as a customer service chemist the marketing department made
a request for technical help and I was assigned to help. One of our
jobbers went bankrupt and marketing didn't want to lose his customers
and since Total was his largest creditor Total took control of his
business.
The jobber went bankrupt because of very poor business
practices one of which was that he didn't keep inventory controls, he
claimed his drivers were stealing from him but he could not prove it
because he didn't have any records.
The first thing Total's
company manager did was to set up inventory controls. At the end of
his first day on the job which happened to be a Saturday, he measured
the amount of product in each of the tanks with a dip stick. A dip
stick is nothing more than a twelve foot yard stick. He put water
detecting paste on the bottom foot of the stick and stuck it into
each tank though a sampling hole on the top. When he removed the
stick he could see the liquid line and read the number of inches of
product in the tank to a quarter of an inch and also knew how many
inches of water was in the bottom of each tank. Then by referring to
a chart on each tank he could calculate how much product was in each
tank.
On Monday morning before the drivers began to load their
trucks, he stuck each tank again and to his surprise the gasoline
tank had lost a large amount of product. Immediately, he knew there
was a leak.
He closed the valve on the line at the bottom of the
tank. Then he had a contractor remove the dirt from the underground
line from the valve to the loading rack with a back hoe and they
discovered a union that was never brought up tight. Obviously, it had
been leaking since the first day the underground line was put into
operation. No wonder the jobber went bankrupt.
The union was
tightened and the line was put back into service and that would have
been the end of the story except for one very important detail. The
jobbers bulk plant was next door to a grain elevator and about a week
later the grain elevator had a fire in a small basement underneath
the office.
They called the gas company to check on a small hot
water boiler that was on the dirt floor in the basement. When they
went to check the boiler they discovered small flames coming from the
ground in many places.
They shut off the gas at the street but the
flames continued to burn. They stuck a probe into the ground next to
the largest flame and took a sample of the gas. The sample was
analyzed and it was not natural gas.
The elevator manager went to
the bulk plant manager and asked if he had a leak. Then phones
started ringing in many offices. The insurance company of the
elevator went ballistic and the bulk plant manager asked for
help.
After a survey of the bulk plant and the elevator, I
contracted a gravel company to bore holes between the bulk plant and
the elevator with their gravel sampling auger. Two insurance
inspectors were present when the holes were bored and when the auger
brought up gasoline saturated soil they were very concerned about a
possible fire if some one threw a cigarette near one of the
holes.
One of the insurance inspectors was a smoker, he threw lit
cigarettes into and around the holes, but nothing happened. To
further test their concern I took a sheet of newspaper, opened it
fully, folded it on the diagonal, and then rolled it into a long
cylinder. He lit one end of the paper cylinder for me. I then
approached a hole, crouched down low, extended my arm, and moved so
the lit end of the paper was over the hole. I did this to each hole
that had gasoline soaked soil and each hole burned with a low flame.
After I had lit the fifth hole the insurance inspector took his
cigarette lighter and lit the sixth hole before I could stop him.
If
you have ever heard a flame front propagate down a cylinder, it is a
sound you will never forget. That sound caused him to recoil ever so
slightly, but enough to prolong his life. When the flame front
reached the speed of sound it detonated and a flash of bright blue
flames shot fifteen feet into the air singeing a small amount of his
hair as he recoiled.
His partner had to support him when he stood,
his face was ghost white and he was shaking. He knew he had been
within a fraction of an inch of death. Several minutes later he said,
'Now I know why you did what you did'.
He had a small amount of
knowledge and it was very dangerous, it almost ended his life. He
knew that each hole that I lit burned gently and assumed all of them
would and that brings us to the second verse and if he had known the
second verse this event may not have happened.
'A little knowledge can be dangerous, but a little ignorance can be deadly.'
Return to Oil table of contents
First, a little knowledge: most people
know that plants take carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and give
off oxygen, so what is the problem?
The problem is a little
ignorance: plants consume every atom of oxygen they produce during
respiration and decomposition and release every molecule of carbon
dioxide they took in. The system is completely balanced, no increase
in oxygen and no reduction in carbon dioxide. Burning is very rapid
decomposition, so when we burn plant material as a fuel the system
remains completely balanced that is why organic materials, provided
we allow them to regrow, are call 'renewables'.
And that is not
the whole story. Crude oil by definition is a hydrocarbon, all fossil
fuels are hydrocarbons. Plants produce carbohydrates: sugars,
starches, cellulose, etc. Now when carbohydrates are consumed they
only remove two oxygen atoms for every carbon atom, but hydrocarbons
consume three atoms of oxygen for every carbon atom. That means that
every time we consume oil, any fossil fuel, we are reducing the
amount of oxygen available for us to breathe.
Why worry, the
atmosphere has tons and tons of oxygen. That is true, but starting in
1909 with the advent of the automobile, we have nearly tripled the
amount of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere and we will double it
again in the next ten years.
The most recent reports in the
scientific journals leave me very depressed. For more than twenty
five years our public has been fed a steady stream of disinformation,
making the possibility of a panic all the more probable when people
finally wake up and realize that they have been told a lie because
they will not know who to believe.
I don't want our economy to
crash, I want my grand children to have a chance. Alternatives will
take ten to twenty years before they can replace our current sources
of energy. Oil consumption is our biggest threat and it is also the
easiest one to conserve and to replace. We must replace a little
ignorance with education, research, and conservation. We cannot
continue consuming fossil fuels Willy Nilly. Anarchy and chaos will
not help, we must take an orderly approach to the problem and we must
start NOW!
Return to Oil table of contents
A10J08 There is No Need to Panic
We have a small amount of time, how
much, I don't know the exact amount. All I know is that it is urgent
that we reduce and eventually eliminate the consumption of fossil
fuels because once we convert hydrocarbons and oxygen to carbon
dioxide and water, for all practical purposes, we will never get the
one third of the oxygen back.
We must make a meaningful reduction
in oil consumption, not just a token reduction, because the trend is
going up at an ever increasing rate. Remember, in 1909 the world oil
consumption was zero for all practical purposes. It went to thirty
million barrels a day in the '60's, to over eighty five million
barrels a day in '08 and has held steady at about 100 million barrels
a day since '12.
Our country consumes one third of the world's
energy with less than ten per cent of the world's population, if the
rest of the world's population consumes one third as much as we do
our biosphere will be swamped. We are very rapidly approaching the
day when we will have to make this decision: do I want to drive my
car today or do I want to breathe.
The transition from fossil
fuels, hydrocarbons, to renewable fuels, carbohydrates, and to other
non carbon sources of energy will be expensive, inconvenient, and
frustrating. Errors will be made, some energy sources will only be
temporary and therefore expensive. The conversion time will be long,
unless we make the conversion a very high priority. It will take more
than ten years to make the first temporary conversions that is why we
must start now.
Oil will be difficult to replace because oil is a
safe, convenient, and economical source of energy for vehicles. We
over look the magnitude of the problem because our country has the
infrastructure to move massive amounts of products from the source to
their destinations very quickly. True, economics has forced this
efficiency, but when you step back and look closely at the quantities
that this country moves, it is staggering. We take a lot for granted
and that is an understatement.
Now because oil is a safe,
convenient, and economical source of energy for vehicles, this is the
source of energy that the developing countries are going to use. This
is why oil consumption is the most dangerous threat to our country
and it is our own fault. We have taught the rest of the world how to
consume, consume, consume and we have done it well.
If it wasn't
so serious I would laugh when people complain about the price of
gasoline, we caused the price increases. Most people don't even have
a clue to what is happening and what is going to happen. Our public
is in a state of denial.
Return to Oil table of contents
I would like to call your attention to
two changes in the dynamics of our politics. One change came with the
advent of TV. TV is very convenient, but TV is very restrictive, it
has a very limited focus. When you read a newspaper if an article
does not interest you, you simply skip it and go to the next article.
You can't do that with TV.
You can switch channels, but most of
the channels are covering the same stories. Plus the fact that TV can
only present a limited amount of data in a given period of time and
you can't set it down and go do something else and return without
missing something. The only other option is to record all the news
broadcasts and selectively view each one. How many people have the
time to do that?
Another problem, TV is expensive, so the TV
companies are very sensitive to their advertisers wishes which places
an unwanted bias on what you see and hear on TV. When money is the
deciding factor, many times the only deciding factor, we are in great
danger.
Politics has always had an element of denial, distraction,
deception, deceit, and out right lies, but in 1950 senator Joseph
McCarthy took it to a new level and a new intensity with his
communist witch hunt. And our country has been hunting witches ever
since, Russia, China, and now terrorism.
Because our focus has
been on witch hunts we have made many very bad decisions, Vietnam
being the worst one. TV has played a major role in the witch hunts
because witch hunts have a very limited and narrow focus which fits
TV's limitations very well.
Sadly, when our attention is focused
on the witch hunts we are not paying attention to our real problems,
we are distracted and are easily mislead by the capitalists, so they
can achieve control for their own limited purposes.
Earlier
another change was taking place, non disclosure. Eisenhower made the
first major non disclosure when he learned that our military had
intentionally leaked a false story about the Russians building longer
runways, which meant that they had longer range bombers and thus the
cold war was accelerated out of control. Eisenhower nearly burst a
blood vessel when he found out, but for what ever were his reasons he
never told the public. He never disclosed the liars. A trend that has
continued to this day.
From '50's to the '80's many politicians,
some bureaucrats, and a few CEO's, mainly auto and oil, denied that
we had problems, but they were willing to admit there was a
possibility that we had a problem. Starting with the presidential
election in '80 they would not even admit the possibility of a
problem.
We have let the capitalists have complete control, they
spin every mistake to the point where very few people even have a
chance to recognize the mistake. Is there any wonder then why our
country is in denial about oil?
Return to Oil table of contents
What I'm hoping to do is to give people
chance to learn before it is to late and then to encourage them to
change in an orderly fashion so we don't crash our economy.
The
politicians have made accountability in education a major issue
during the last forty years, I would like to have an accountability
for politicians. We are letting our politicians get away with murder,
murder of the truth.
If we continue to let the politicians murder
the truth we will become a nation of idiots and in complete control
of the capitalists. If we are incapable of determining the truth, we
will be incapable of defining our problems and if you can not define
a problem you can never solve it.
In order to keep the witch hunts
going, politicians are presenting solutions to the wrong problem;
therefore the problem is not solved and the witch hunts never
end.
Witch hunts always have an element of truth and most
important they always have an element of danger. Both fit nicely into
an interesting theme for TV, but the truth is distorted and the
danger is misrepresented by the capitalists so they can keep control.
Without a free press to present the data about a problem fairly the
only way the cycle can be broken is for a major disaster to occur
that exposes the lies.
The worst lie currently being presented is
about the nature of science. The capitalists define good science as
being completely accurate, precise, and certain.
There are five
subjects where I find the lack of knowledge completely
incomprehensible, especially in a country so dependent on all five,
democracy, energy, mass production, fair market and science.
Let
me use the data in my own articles in an attempt to shed some light
on science. All of my numbers are based upon my memory and if you
visit eia.doe.gov and go to their crude oil production numbers you
will notice that my number for peak oil production is about 3 million
barrels a day higher than theirs. If you also check their foot notes
you will notice that their data is based on annual reports, The Gas
and Oil Journal, and the Oil Daily. My memory is based upon American
Petroleum Institute data. The API based their data on member surveys.
Many small oil companies are privately owned and do not publish a
public annual report. Over the years as the small oil companies went
out of business the difference between the API numbers and the
government numbers disappeared, but the question still remains which
ones were correct?
Yet after reading my comments can you honestly
say that my numbers have to be completely accurate, precise, and
certain in order for you to gain some very important knowledge. Do I
have to report the day and time to the last second, does it matter if
I round off the number of barrels to even millions instead of to the
last ounce, and when I make a prediction, how certain must I be
before you get the message about the danger. Does it have to be one
hundred per cent certain, if so, why do we have collision insurance
on our cars and fire insurance on our homes?
Return to Oil table of contents
I know carbon chemistry is much more
complex than I have presented it. For example my use of the
generalization of three oxygens to burn one hydrocarbon carbon atom,
some molecules require more, some less. In general the longer the
hydrocarbon chain the closer it comes to the generalization, but
natural gas, methane, requires four oxygens per carbon atom, while
benzene requires two and a half oxygens per carbon.
So while it is
better to burn natural gas when considering global heating, it is
better to burn coal when considering oxygen consumption. The
reference point you choose will determine your outlook. Even
comparing pounds Vs gallons will change your outlook. In other words,
we cannot expect simplistic solutions to solve a complex problem.
We
must start conserving fossil fuels now so our technology has a chance
to catch up with our life style. The process will be slow and
expensive and our current standard of living will fall, but when we
conserve fossil fuels we are conserving oxygen. Remember, the GDP
does not equal the standard of living.
We have had seven major
spikes in the price of oil and very few have paid attention
especially the auto companies. I expect the price of oil to fall a
little because of fracting, but these wells are depleting very fast
and when they do our oil production will be very low. I'm afraid the
next major price increase could crash our economy. The trend for the
price of oil is up and will not change until demand declines which
will not occur until there is a major conservation effort.
Talk
about short term thinking, the hedge funds are speculating in oil
options and futures, I hope they reinvest their earnings in non
carbon fuel research because you can't eat money and you can't breath
money.
I hope you will follow the lead of the few who are paying
attention to our problem. For example, our home is super insulated as
much as our budget will allow, we have hot air solar panels on the
side of our home in '91 and photo voltaic panels on our roof in '09,
we drive a fuel efficient car, 32 mpg on an annual basis, we limit
our driving to necessary trips, etc. But that is a drop in the bucket
unless many people join in.
You will not like my suggestions for
what we should do. Because we are twenty five years behind the curve,
we should tax all crude oil and crude oil products both foreign and
domestic at least one dollar per gallon and tax natural gas
consumption an additional penny for each ccf above 1000 ccf consumed
per month and electricity an additional penny for each Kwatt above
1000 Kwatts. Make the changes in taxes slowly so our economy has some
time to adjust. Incentives will encourage only a few people to change
their habits, but most people will respond to changes in their pocket
book.
We will need to use mass transit, not because it will be
cheaper or save more energy, but because it will much easier for mass
transit to use non hydrocarbon fuels. We do not have the
infrastructure to use non hydrocarbon fuels. We need to install wind
generators as fast as possible which will require changes in zoning
laws, it will be easy to install electric car charging stations
because all that is needed is an electrical connection. Alternative
energy sources will not supply any where near the amount of energy we
consume in the near future.
Several people mentioned that they
were disappointed that I didn't mention a solution to our problem. I
don't have a solution and I don't like any that have been proposed
for a number of different reasons that's why I stress conservation,
we need time to develop our technologies.
Also several people
questioned my use of the word 'simplistic' in the sentence 'we cannot
expect simplistic solutions to solve a complex problem'. According to
my dictionary, simplistic is an adjective for simplism which means
the act or an instance of over simplifying; especially : the
reduction of a problem to a false simplicity by ignoring complicating
factors.
This is exactly what the capitalists are doing.
Obviously, if a problem is defined with false simplicity, it can
never be solved.
Over the years, I have offended many people when
asked, 'What right does OPEC have to raise the price of OUR oil? Who
do they think they are?' by replying 'Cheap oil is not one of the Ten
Commandments'.
If you take the data from the five large oil
companies on profits and crude oil production and use their average
price per barrel of crude oil, you will find that if you subtract the
profit from crude oil from their reported profit you will find that
they would have a negative number, that is because the cost of R &
D plus the cost of exploration and production consumed their profits
from refining and marketing.
In other words the oil companies made
money not by their own effort. It was a wind fall and so I agree that
the politicians should place a wind fall profit tax on the oil, gas,
and coal companies. Gas and coal will be able to raise prices based
on oil costs giving them windfall profits as well.
I also question
the large salaries on the same grounds, they didn't earn the large
profits, so why should they get the benefit from something they
didn't do.
When the price of crude oil went over thirty dollars a
barrel, the politicians should have removed all special tax breaks to
the oil industry, for the same reason as above plus the fact that the
oil industry doesn't need tax incentives to do what they need to do.
Although, the statements of many oil CEO's have been down right
stupid, the engineers and scientist of the oil companies are some of
the best in the world and they know what has to be done for the oil
companies to remain in business.
My guess is that they are waiting
to see which technology will be the one to use and then they will use
their large amounts of money to exploit that technology.
During
'08 the high cost of oil was sapping our economy. At more than $100 a
barrel, using the North Sea Brent price, oil accounted for 730
billion dollars a year, making oil expenditures over 12.5 % of our
economy. That is a dangerous amount for a single commodity. Prior to
‘08 oil was less than 3% of our economy. This high per cent
also indicates that alternatives are not readily available.
Since
nearly three quarters of the money spent on oil leaves our country
and comes back to purchase our bonds, it does not contribute to our
economy. Is there any wonder then why we have high unemployment and
inflation?
Most people watch how they spend their money. To become
energy independent we must watch how we spend the energy we use. When
we become energy efficient we will save money. Our economy can not
recover until we become energy independent.
We have had seven
spikes in the price of crude oil since Saudi Arabia tried to raise
the price of crude in '63 and failed. Five of the increases have been
$25 or less until '08 when the price went from $28 a barrel to over
$140 and '11 when the price went from $40 a barrel to $114 and back
down.
My mathematical models indicated that a 1.5% cushion between
supply and demand was needed to keep oil prices stable because of
small changes in supply or demand. All of the price spikes fit my
models. The small ones encroached on the 1.5% cushion causing the
price to rise by a small amount.
When ever demand exceeded supply
in my models the price went to infinity. A $112 price increase is
certainly a monster. It told me that in Aug of '08 demand exceeded
supply, the 84.5 million barrels a day was the maximum production
level at that time. Then more production was added so our maximum was
about 85.6 million barrels a day, but the '11 spike confirms that
demand again exceeded supply. In '12 production was about 100 million
barrels a day and has held steady since. To many people believe that
there is an unlimited supply of crude oil, not true. We will hit the
maximum again if we are not careful and cause another major
recession.
Another thing is that most people refuse to do simple
arithmetic, so for one of my presentation of 'What I remember about
the oil industry' I did it for them. The arithmetic is based upon the
following question, 'What if all the people in the world consumed oil
at the same rate as we do?'
I used simple numbers, more accurate
numbers do not change the conclusion. Since about '76 we have been
consuming between 18 and 22 million barrels a day, so I used 20
million. I used .3 billion for our population and 6 billion for the
world. So the arithmetic becomes 20 divided by .3 times by 6 which
yields 400 million barrels of oil a day.
It took us one hundred
years to reach 84.5 million barrels a day. The oil industry didn't
really begin until cars came into wide spread use some time after
1909. So how can any reasonable person expect crude oil production to
ever reach 400 million barrels a day at any time in the near
future?
Now three things should be obvious from this simple
calculation. One, we have a population problem, to many people
consuming to few resources. Two, whether people are willing to
believe it or not we do have a resource limit, we live in a finite
world. Three, drilling will not solve our problem if all the people
in the world consume oil as we do.
World oil demand is already
increasing faster than the oil industry can find, drill, and pump
crude oil. Recessions and efficiency are the only things keeping the
price of crude oil in check by reducing demand. If we do not get our
act together and soon our future is very bleak.
Our country burns
17 million barrels a day and the people of the world burn 100 million
barrels a day. At about 150,000 BTU's per gallon and 42 gallons to a
barrel and 17 million barrels a day that is 107,100,000,000,000 BTU's
of heat we are releasing every day. I will let you calculate how much
heat the people of the world release each day.
Where does all that
heat go? When fossil fuels are burned a lot of water is released in
the form of steam which releases heat to the air when the steam cools
and condenses. During the burning process a lot of heat is radiated
to the surroundings which again is transferred to the air. The air
then transports the heat to the oceans. A small amount of the heat is
radiated into space while the above events are taking place, the rest
contributes to global heating.
Our temperature has remained cool
in spite of all this heat because the oceans are storing most of it.
The BTU is a small number, it is the amount of heat needed to raise
one pound of water one degree F. The oceans are very large and one
cubic foot of water weighs about 60 pounds so the oceans can store a
very large amount of heat, but most people are unaware that we have
now measured an increase in ocean water temperature more than 1000
feet down. This is why a half a degree C or one degree F increase in
ocean temperature is a very important number because the amount of
heat the oceans can store is astronomical.
How much longer can the
oceans continue to store our waste heat, no one knows, no one was a
live the last time this happened. The best we can do is to make an
educated guess, mine is 13 more years.
Most people forget that
before the first car was made in 1909 almost no oil was burned. Since
1909 the burning of fossil fuels have contributed to global heating
in two ways. First, the heat released during the burning and second,
by increasing the carbon dioxide in our atmosphere.
Most people
are oblivious to the two fold way we are heating our planet.
It
will take a thousand years after we stop burning fossil fuels for the
biosphere to start to reduce carbon dioxide in our atmosphere so we
must reduce our burning of fossil fuel much faster than we are now
doing so our oceans can continue to store our waste heat.
All
crude oils are liquid hydrocarbons and everyone is made of carbon,
hydrogen, and sulfur. No other atoms. Most crude oils have entrained
vanadium oxide. There are many different molecules in crude oil
because carbon atoms can join other carbon atoms. The simplest one is
methane CH4, followed by ethane C2H6, followed by propane, butane,
pentane, hexane, heptane, octane, etc up to about C40. Look up the
chemical characteristics of each and you will find that everyone of
them has a density less than 1. Water has a density of 1 which means
all liquid hydrocarbons float.
I have measured the vapor pressure
of all the small hydrocarbon molecules and if you looked up their
boiling points you will know that the small molecules will evaporate
very quickly.
I want everyone to do three experiments. You will
need a 2 gallon pail, an eye dropper, some motor oil, some Vaseline,
some dry sand, and some paper toweling. Fill the pail almost full
with water, make a fist and put you hand to the bottom to make sure
the water does not over flow. Next draw some motor oil into the eye
dropper and put it near the bottom of the pail and squeeze one drop
at a time out of the eye dropper and tell me how much time it takes
for the oil to reach the surface and when it does tell me how much
time it takes for the oil to spread across the surface. With the
paper toweling remove the oil from the surface and tell me how much
oil is on the bottom of the pail. Use some paper toweling to wipe the
water and some oil from you arm and hand. Next put some Vaseline on a
finger and hold it over the pail of water and wiggle the Vaseline
between you finger and thumb until some of it falls into the water.
Tell me how much of the Vaseline sank to the bottom. Next make three
piles of sand larger than the amount of Vaseline. Remove the Vaseline
from the pail and mix it with one of the piles of sand. When all of
the sand is mixed with the Vaseline drop it into the pail. Did the
mixture sink? If not remove it from the pail and mix it with the next
pile of sand and again drop it into the pail. If it did not sink,
remove it from the pail and mix it with the last pile of sand and
again drop it into the pail. If it did not sink repeat the above
until it does. When it does sink you have made a very poor road
asphalt. Road asphalt is not asphalt it is a mixture of a small
amount of asphalt and a large amount of sand and rock, do not confuse
the two.
Vaseline is made from large hydrocarbon molecules, it
would be similar to crude oil after the small molecules have
evaporated which will happen in the first 24 hour after being exposed
to air. Asphalt is made from much larger hydrocarbon molecules than
Vaseline.
The mixing of oil with dirt happens when wind or current
waves wash the oil on shore and as the small hydrocarbon molecules
evaporate the residual becomes more viscous and sticky and the dirt
can not escape. When the residual oil is coated with enough dirt or
rust or small stones it will become heavy enough to sink when rain or
waves wash the oil dirt mixture back into the water.
Density
determines which fluids will float and which fluids will sink. The
heaviest oil I have analyzed weighed 7.8 pounds per gallon, water
weighs 8.3 pounds per gallon and density says the water will go down
and the oil will go up.
The Tar Sands crude oil is also called
bitumen. Bitumen is a general term for any tarry material, don't
confuse it with Bituminous which is the name of soft coal. All liquid
hydrocarbons are lighter than water which means they float. Some
solid hydrocarbons also float, but most of them are heavier than
water and they will sink, Bituminous and Anthracite coal are two
familiar examples.
The Tars Sands Bitumen is a liquid hydrocarbon
which has a very high viscosity, heat lowers viscosity that is why
the Tar Sands Bitumen is heated either in a retort or with high
pressure steam or fire flooding. As the viscosity is lowered by heat
it can be pumped, but then it must be mixed with a very low viscosity
oil so the mixture will have a viscosity low enough to pump at
ambient temperatures. The mixture is then referred to as Dilbit. If
viscosity is not low enough the mixture will freeze in the
pipeline.
The Dilbit is no more hot, toxic, or corrosive than any
other crude oil, the person who made that statement was
irresponsible. First of all after the Tar Sands Bitumen is heated to
extract it from the sand it will cool down and be mixed before it is
transported by pipeline. It definitely will not be hotter than the
dirt and water the pipeline goes through.
All crude oils contain
some sulfur compounds, but except for hydrogen sulfide the rest are
not toxic until they are burned to create sulfur dioxide which is
quickly oxidized to sulfuric acid by the oxygen in the air. But
regardless of what Enbridge says no one puts a crude oil into a
pipeline containing more than 5 ppm hydrogen sulfide. Hydrogen
sulfide is removed by condensation plants soon after the oil comes
out of a well. The refineries remove most of remaining sulfur to
eliminate the odor which means the remaining sulfur is in the heavy
fuels which means you will only breath that sulfur as sulfur dioxide
when you breathe the flue gas from the boilers and furnaces of heavy
industry.
Any time you use paraffin, wax, mineral oil or any
product containing petroleum jelly, petrolatum, or similar words you
are using oil. These products have been used for years without any
toxic effects.
All crude oils contain a small amount of benzene,
ethyl benzene, and vanadium, they are toxic, but you will breath more
benzene and ethyl benzene when you fill the gas tank of your car than
you will breath from any oil spill. When crude oil is fractionated
the vanadium will end up in the very heavy number six fuel oil which
means you will only be exposed to the vanadium oxide in the flue gas
of a furnace burning number six fuel oil. I lived for more than
twenty years down wind from Total's refinery which burned heavy
number six fuel oil and did not suffer from vanadium poisoning. Our
bodies have a mechanism to remove heavy metals so as long as the
amount we ingest is lower than what our bodies can eliminate we do
not get poisoned. Oil is not toxic, it coats everything that comes
into contact with it and it smothers the skin of plants and animals
and their skin cannot breath and they over heat and if the oil is
aspirated into their lungs, it prevents the transfer of oxygen in and
carbon dioxide out.
Return to Oil table of contents
Enbridge operates many pipelines in the
great lakes region, but the line I am concerned about is line five.
It begins in Alberta Canada and goes to Sarnia Canada. To get there
the line goes east from Alberta, then south east through Minnesota,
then east through northern Wisconsin and Michigan's upper peninsula
to the west of St Ignace from there it crosses the straits to the
west of Mackinaw City, then south and then east to Port Huron, then
across the river to Sarnia. When the pipeline was constructed it was
laid on the bottom of the straits.
I live a block and a half from
the straits. I have been walking, in good weather, the shore from
Alexander Henry park west until I go under the bridge and return for
thirty years. When I reach the end of my walk and look out toward St
Helena Island before I turn around, the last thing I want to see is
an oil geyser caused by a rupture in line five. I know it would be a
mess, but it would not the end of the world.
At least five groups
have been protesting line five, they want line five removed from
under the straits, and at least five studies have been done about the
conditions in the straits. Compared to Total's pipeline operations
Enbridge's operation is very poor, they are not honest, and do not
keep the people along line five informed, they continue to tell
everyone how safe line five is.
When line five was installed the
characteristics of the current in the Straits were not known. Simply
by laying the pipe on the bottom of the Straits created turbulence
where there was not turbulence before, which washed out some of the
dirt under the pipe. To provide support for the pipe Enbridge
installed anchors which in turn created more turbulence enough so
some of the anchors failed. Enbridge is currently using screw type
anchors, I would like to see them be required to drill into the bed
rock and install concrete supported iron beams to support the
line.
Not once in any of the studies on line five was the speed
with which oil comes to the surface mentioned nor how fast it spreads
on the surface. I do not have any reason to doubt the result of the U
of M's prediction of the distribution caused by the currents in the
Straits, they used buoyancy neutral tracers and recorded the
distribution every twelve hours. But there is a flaw in their report
they never mentioned that oil is not buoyancy neutral, it floats
which means the oil will not follow their distribution pattern on the
surface. The current at the surface is less than one mile per hour.
The wind is seldom under ten miles an hour which means the wind will
have at least a ten to one advantage over the current which means the
wind will determine where an oil leak will go not the current. The
current can only move the oil during the time it is below the
surface, about 3 minutes, which mean about 3 minutes at the current
speed at that time which means if any water intake line is below the
surface and more than that distance away from the leak there will be
no oil in the drinking water. Oil does not contaminate water, oil is
not soluble in water and water is not soluble in oil, nothing comes
out of the oil and goes into the water.
But sadly another study
use the current distribution to show where the oil would go and it
showed that the oil would cover the entire area of the straits east
and west and up and down the coast lines which led another study to
grossly over estimate the damage caused by a leak in the straits and
the protesters repeated this error many times. And the study did not
mentioned the one thing about oil that will keep the tourists away
and that is the odor. Most people who come to the Straits do not go
into the water, they come to take pictures so the oil on the water
will not prevent them from doing so, but the odor will drive them
away.
Have you watched where the ice goes in the straits when it
breaks up in the spring. It goes where the wind pushes it. The
current has almost no effect on where the ice goes. The wind forces
the ice to go to the shore and there it will pile up and become
grounded, then the wind can no longer move the ice. The same thing
will happen to the oil, the wind will push it to shore and because it
is floating on top of the water it will move further on to the shore
than the water. Once the oil coats the rocks and sand and moves among
vegetation the wind can no longer move the oil and neither can
anything else.
This why cleaning up an oil spill is an oxymoron.
When the oil becomes grounded it is nearly impossible to remove it
and if it is removed all that is accomplished is to move the oil to
another place which means the oil is never cleaned up. The purpose of
a clean up is to move the oil to another place, even if the distance
is only six inches, so it is out of sight, out of mind and people
will forget.
Someone said a leak in the straits would stop the
boats from passing through the straits. Once the leak has been
stopped the wind will push the oil to shore which means the open
water will be free of oil so the only thing that will stop the boats
from going through the Straits is the Coast Guard or ice.
Another
factor that will determine where the oil will go is the direction of
the wind. 45% of the time the wind comes from the north of west to
the west of north which means most of the oil will be grounded on the
north shore of Mackinaw City, a small amount will go to Round Island.
35% of the time the wind is from the east of north to the north of
east and 15 % of the time the wind will be from the east and south
which means no oil will go east of the bridge. 5% of the time the
wind will be directly out of the west and that is the only time oil
will go to Mackinaw Island. If that west wind is 5 miles per hour
pushing the oil from a line five leak, it will arrive on Mackinaw
Island in about 2 hours, you can calculate the time for faster wind
speeds. Now take into account the amount of time it will take for
someone to recognize a leak has happened, contact the coast guard,
and the time it will take the coast guard to arrive on the scene, the
oil will have spread to cover more than 25 square miles. How can
anyone contain and recover an area that size.
I have never seen an
oil spill that was contained. On water oil spreads out very quickly,
one drop of gasoline will cover an Olympic size swimming pool in less
than one minute, but it will never do so because it would evaporate
before it could. This is why containment and recovery of oil is an
oxymoron. Enbridge and the politicians have set the coast guard up as
the scapegoat for their responsibility, despicable.
Also another
property of crude oil must be taken into account. Crude oil is made
up of many different hydrocarbon molecules each having a different
boiling point. Gasoline makes up the bulk of the boiling point range,
about 45 to 55 % of a light crude oil and about 30 to 35 % of a heavy
crude oil with the intermediate crude oil in between. The gasoline
portion will evaporate within the first 24 hours upon exposure to the
air. The heating oil range, about 10 %, will evaporate within the
first week, the diesel fuel range, about another 10 %, will evaporate
in about another week. As the smaller molecules of the the residual
continue to evaporate it will become more viscous. As the evaporation
continues the residual will become sticky. At this point dirt will
stick to the oil and if strong wave action is present the dirt will
mix with the oil. But as the evaporation continues and the viscosity
increases the residual will lose its stickiness and dirt will no
longer stick to the residual. At this point the tar ball is benign
and will remain for centuries. The tar ball will be about 5 to 10 %
of the original crude oil. When the boiling point of the residual is
far above ambient temperatures and the vapor pressure of residual oil
is almost non existent, if you held it to your nose, you would have
to breathe very hard to even get an oil odor. It will be benign, you
can pick it up with your hands. Put in a proper land fill and return
it to the ground.
Now tell me how anyone can recover the amount
that has evaporated. Sun light and oxygen will convert the evaporated
oil into carbon dioxide and water over a period of time, 12 years or
more depending upon the size of the molecule.
Someone said dirt
would mix with the oil while it was below the surface of the water
and on the shore, not true, oil will coat the dirt not mix. Oil will
not penetrate water saturated dirt. The only time dirt will mix with
oil is during very high pressure and high volume event.
If you
have done the Vaseline experiment you will realize that it take a lot
of dirt to mix with the oil before it will change the mixture's
density enough for the mixture to sink, oil floats even with dirt in
it.
To say dirt will mix with the oil if line five ruptures in the
straits is absurd. More than 90% of line five does not touch the
dirt, this is the danger of line five, most of the pipe is not
supported.
Divers have told me that the water in the Straits is
very clear which means there is very little suspended matter in the
water available to mix with any oil leak and even if it did because
it would be suspended in the water it would have to be near buoyancy
neutral which would not change the density of the oil even if it
mixed with the oil.
In dry dirt oil will seep between the dirt
particles and sink until it reaches the water table. As the water
table moves up and down the oil will move up and down, but there will
be a no man's land in between the high and the low water table mark
where the dirt is oil covered and then water covered and if a well
point is in this no man's land oil will be in the well water. I have
discovered this mistake often.
During a high pressure high volume
event such as a large pipeline rupture, oil and dirt will mix until
the flow of oil removes the dirt in its path, from then on no mixing
will occur. The first oil will saturate the dry dirt and the rest of
the oil will flow over it without any mixing.
Someone said Tar
Sands crude oil was like putting sand paper into a pipeline. All
crude oils have a small amount of sand, water, and bottom solids. All
of the Tar Sands crude oils I have analyzed did not have any more
sand than any other crude oil.
In addition, Total's pipeline crews
would bring the pieces of pipeline pipe they removed during the
repairing of a pipeline leak back to a salvage yard and I could not
see any difference between the pipe that transported crude oil and
the pipe that transported gasoline or heating oil on the inside. All
of Total's pipeline leaks were caused from the outside not the
inside, so much for crude oil being corrosive.
One author said in
effect, only 65% of an oil spill can be recovered. If anyone thinks
oil can be contained and recovered from a leak in the Straits with
normal 1 to 2 foot waves and at least 10 mile an hour wind, they have
rocks in their bottom. I have never seen a recovery that recovered
more than 1%. Recovery operations are nothing more than PR, so they
can say they did all that they could do.
One of the protest
slogans is 'Oil and water don't mix.' That is true oil and water do
not mix, nothing in the oil is soluble in water and nothing in the
water is soluble in the oil which means oil does not transfer
anything into the water not even the oil itself.
On land oil
recovery is next to impossible. The first oil spill I worked on, the
gasoline sank to the water table and then flowed underneath a grain
elevator how could it be recovered. The second oil spill, caused by
road salt, I worked on was at a road crossing in a town. The oil leak
was discovered when the odor entered a house that did not have a
vented sewer line. It was uncapped behind the toilet. When I first
entered the house I could not understand how the people could smell
the oil above the sewer odor.
The sewer line was about a foot
below the pipeline and it was an old unsealed clay tile line which
allowed the oil to enter the sewer line. The pipeline crew dug up the
oil saturated dirt and replaced it with sand, but again recovery was
next impossible almost all of the oil went to the sewage plant.
The
oil saturated dirt was dumped into Total's first water recovery pond
so the water would force as much oil out of the dirt before the dirt
was then composted.
Return to Oil table of contents
Many people are concerned about the
amount of plastic in the oceans, myself included, but plastic is not
the problem, disposal is.
If plastic is recycled or put in a
proper land fill it is the same as keeping oil in the ground.
Here
is how I use and don't use plastic. I use cloth bags for my
groceries. I use the plastic bags from the produce counter for
Romaine lettuce. I remove two leaves at lunch, close the plastic bag
with a clip and put it in my refrigerator. This way the lettuce will
keep for two weeks. When the lettuce is used, I dry the bags and use
them to put my chicken bones, shrimp tails, and meat packaging in
them to go into my trash can. I use the plastic bags from frozen peas
and carrots in the same way as the lettuce bags.
When I cook lamb
stew, I cook enough for six meals, the same for when I cook lamb and
Lima beans, and when I make baked beans. I put one serving in each of
six reusable plastic containers and put them in the freezer until
used. I eat two table spoons of peanut butter and one heaping table
spoon of apple sauce at each meal. I put them into three reusable
plastic containers each morning and put them into the refrigerator
until used. I store apple sauce and pineapple in reusable plastic
containers, I use glass pint canning jars for all other food. I use
plastic caps instead of the metal rings and caps because the metal
rusts. The plastic containers take up less room than the glass plus a
side benefit. The plastic has a much lower specific heat than glass
so they use less electricity to cool them down reducing my carbon
foot print. I eat two cookies each day, I bake thirty and store them
in a reusable plastic container.
I cannot remember the last time I
threw away any spoiled food, a very real problem when you live alone.
Return to Oil table of contents
A10J14 Water Reclamation at Total's Alma refinery.
The refinery used river water to cool
gasoline and heating oil to air temperature to prevent the oil from
evaporating out of the storage tanks. All heat exchangers will
eventually leak, so to prevent any oil from returning to the river
the heat exchanger water flowed through a series of four ponds. The
input to each pond was near the surface and the outlet was on the
opposite side and below the water level. The outlet water then passed
through a catch basin to ensure that no oil passed to the next pond
or into the county drain which returned to the river. No oil was ever
found in any of the catch basins.
All of the rain water from the
refinery also went into the first pond along with any oil saturated
dirt from any oil spill and any oil recovered from any oil spill. A
drag line was used to stir the dirt and water. This procedure meant
the first pond was always cover with oil which was skimmed on regular
basis.
Every day the environmental chemist sampled the out flow of
each pond and fed the gold fish that lived in the last three ponds.
He also poured one quart of the out flow of the last pond into a
large aquarium in the hall way of the lab which had several different
kinds of fish plus snails and water plants.
The third oil spill I
worked on was the result of a contractor using the drag line to
remove some of the oil soak dirt in Total's first water recovery pond
so the dirt could be composted and he hit an unmarked county drain.
He did not realize what had happened until the entire pond had
drained. The oil in the pond was mostly from oil saturated dirt which
was very heavy and contain a lot of dirt and when it reached the Pine
river which was almost at flood stage it flowed very rapidly down
river. The pipeline crews could not keep up with it and it finally
stopped when it reached the marsh land south west of Midland. I
helped spread straw in an attempt to stop the oil from continuing
down river, but it was an exercise in futility. The pipeline crews
did recover a very small amount of the heavy oil when the fast
current quickly mix in enough more dirt when the waves drove it to
shore so it would sink and then the pipeline crews could pick it up
by hand from the bottom of the river. Most of the heavy oil was
trapped by the vegetation along the banks and in the marshland where
it will remain for centuries.
Oil containment, recovery, and clean
up is an oxymoron.
Someone put up a post on Face Book showing a
picture of a man wearing gloves with both of his hands together
holding what looked like Tar Sands oil. I made the comment that the
post was not true. I did not even bother to read the post. I hate
propaganda. Even if the facts they presented were true, I was willing
to bet they used emotionally loaded words, the picture sure was.
These people commonly refer to the Tar Sand crude oil as dirty and
other such words. They call it dirty because it is energy negative,
that is, it takes more energy to produce the oil than the oil
contains. This happens because the Canadian government is subsidizing
the production of the oil. They are trying to create jobs so people
will move into the region. In addition the cost of natural gas is
very low so when combined with the subsidies it is cost effective to
produce the oil, but not energy effective. But neither is ethanol
from corn and we need the corn more than the ethanol.
By using the
word dirty to mean something else it is deceptive as well as
misleading. As A. Lincoln said, 'You can call the tail of a dog a
leg, but that does not make it a leg'. The Tar Sands crude oil is not
any dirtier than any other oil, but it is energy negative and that is
how it should be described.
My objection is that the post allows
ignorant people to blame the Tar Sands crude oil for global heating.
It is not my fault it is the fault of that dirty oil and the people
do not change their actions nor do they take responsibility for their
actions, the post does not allow them to learn to take responsibility
for their actions because they are mislead by the propaganda. We must
stop burning fossil fuels period, not just the Tar Sands crude
oil.
What I would like to see happen when line five leaks into the
Straits, it is a corrosion leak. Most corrosion leaks are very small.
I have worked on three oil spills, one of which was a road salt
corrosion leak and the actual hole in the pipe was not much bigger
around than a pencil so the amount of oil that came out of the pipe
was small in comparison to a break in a pipe. The dirt helped to hold
the oil back.
This leads to one of my disagreements with the
protest groups. Every group talks about the worst possible leak,
never any thing small and therefore their estimate of the damage is
huge and not very realistic.
The protesters do not display
knowledge of the Straits, the pipe, nor the oil which leads to a lot
of misinformation. Water is not life because if it was we could give
water to dead people and bring them back to life. Water and oil do
not mix. This is true, but then don't say oil contaminates water
because oil is not soluble in water and water is not soluble in oil
and because of the difference in density oil floats on the water. Oil
will coat anything that must enter or leave the water when it is on
the surface of the water at that point. When the wind blows the oil
to shore it can no longer coat anything in the open water.
When
statements are not accurate credibility is lost which means those who
know will not support the goal. To shut down line five we need
everyone to support the goal because without a very large number of
people supporting the goal the politicians will only give lip service
to the goal and will only shut down line five after a leak occurs. I
want the leak to be as small as possible.
The story of the ancient
river bed is a hoax. Water cannot run up hill. The bottom of the
straits is more than 180 feet below the surrounding land so how could
it flow?
Vertical mixing of water takes place every time the
surface water temperature is at 40 degrees, but it only mixes water
not anything floating on the surface.
When people buy gasoline to
go to a protest of any oil facility what can I say that will make
them understand that buying the gasoline is telling the oil industry
to continue doing what they are doing. The money the protesters spent
on gasoline to go to protest speaks louder than their words of
protest. Their action of buying the gasoline is hypocritical, why
spend money to buy gasoline to go to the protest and then protest the
process of getting the gasoline, this is not only hypocritical it is
as about as stupid as stupid gets.
What we buy determines what is
produced, it is that simple, why can't the protesters understand
this. Boycotts do work, protests are hot air. People must take
responsibility for their actions, until that happens all protests are
futile, a waste of time and energy.
I will believe the protesters
are serious when they approach my level of consumption. I burned
144.1 gallons of gasoline the year I criticized the protesters and
414 CCF's of natural gas and bought no electricity. My solar panels
produce more electricity than I use so I used the excess for electric
heat. I estimate my panels produce about 3,000 Kwatt-hr a year. I was
so satisfied with the production of the first ten I had five more
installed the next year. I do not have a meter on the last five so I
can not calculate my actual production.
It is not practical to
reduce my primary fossil fuel consumption further and there is very
little I can do to reduce my secondary and tertiary fossil fuel
consumption so I am using crowd funding projects to install solar
panels on the roof's of home owners who cannot afford to do so. I am
in effect reducing my carbon foot print similar to cap and trade. The
first project was completed in Nov '17 and has produced 750 Kwatt-hr
of fossil fuel free electricity from Nov and Dec. The second project
is in progress. I had considered contributing to my utility's solar
garden, but decided decentralized production is more advantageous
than centralized production, it reduces the load on the local
transformer which could prevent a local brown out.
We must stop
burning fossil fuels, if you know and understand this, then do
something about it, instead of protesting, put your money where your
mouth is.
My most serious disagreement with the protest groups is
they used the same approach with the Pipeline advisory board, the
regulators, and the politicians as they did with the public.
From
my experience protesting on curbs, at public places, or at the
entrance to the bridge are a waste of time and gasoline. If what you
are protesting is not in their back yard those people will completely
ignore the protest message. Those who disagree will be even more firm
in their disagreement. Those who agree will signal agreement, but
they have shown their agreement and will not do any thing else to
support the protest because they did not make a commitment.
The
final test of any public protest is how many voters did the protest
convince to vote for a politician who will actually make a change in
the laws in favor of the protest. The most effective place to do this
at your local political party meetings. If you do not get the support
of those who vote, the protest will fail. This is why many successful
protests took many years to achieve their goal because it took a long
time to convince enough voters to elect the politicians who would
change the laws.
I never read a post from anyone in the protest
groups that indicated they were aware of the political reality of
living in a low density population area. Even if all of our state
senators and reps along line five agreed to sponsor a law to shut
down line five their numbers would be small and they would need to
convince a large number of the other politicians to agree with them
so they would have a majority to pass the law. Honestly, do you think
the slogans of the protest groups would help our politicians convince
the others?
I laughed when Deb said, 'Enbridge is afraid of us. We
have them on the run', after Enbridge mailed a pamphlet to every home
explaining how safe line five was and put their message in many
newspapers. Enbridge was not afraid of the protest groups, they were
afraid of Ed because he was attacking the safety of line five and
they knew they could not silence him so they did the next best thing.
They kept the protest groups thinking they were successful and would
not change their approach and they didn't.
Enbridge was saying the
line was safe, so the protesters needed to provide evidence proving
the line was not safe. Saying, shut line five down, shut line five
down before it leaks, don't oil our water, etc., are noise because
they do not provide any evidence to prove line five was not safe. The
protesters created so much noise at the Pipeline advisory board
hearings that it took attention away from the people who had
something to say and they did not get the attention they deserved .
The same thing happened with the submitted comments, I only read four
comments that provided evidence that would give the board a reason to
shut down line five, all the rest of the comments were nothing but
repetitions of the same meaningless phrases that did not provide any
evidence, so again the four pieces of evidence did not get the
attention they deserved.
Enbridge won, protesters lost.
A
thought occurred to me after I made a comment to a post. The reason
so many protests fail is because the protesters are not making a
distinction between material resources and non material resources.
When trying to change a system the approach to making the change must
be consistent with the attributes of the resource. For example, when
trying to change discrimination which is a non material resource the
approach must be to change the way people THINK about discrimination.
When trying to change the way people use a material resource the
approach must be to change how people USE the resource. To protest
the supplier is futile because people create the demand and until
people stop creating demand nothing will change.
Return to Oil table of contents
When I first read Dynamic Risk's (DR) criticism of Dr Ed Timm's (T) work I became irked, but I could not identify what irked me. I am non verbal person and my brain has difficulty converting my non verb thoughts into verbal format, so all I can do is wait for the conversion to be completed. This limitation makes it difficult for me to meet schedules or to respond quickly. Now I can summarize what irked me.
A professional never claims superior
knowledge, they display it or it is obvious from their
presentations.
A professional attacks the data and or the method,
never the person.
A professional follows the mantra of a
successful submarine commander they never make the same mistake once.
A few examples that especially irked
me.
DR did display knowledge of pipeline pipe regulations, but
little else as you will see. Many times they would list many
different pipe line regulations. I do not understand what they were
trying to accomplish. I have never seen a regulation solve a problem
or prevent an event from happening.
They questioned T's
capabilities. They read his work and they did not understand his
capabilities, I find this very difficult to understand. They claimed
that T did not provide the data nor the methods he used. I read T's
work and I could see the data he used or a reference to where it
could be found and he did provide the methods he used plus he
explained his results. When they compared their methods to T's I
seldom could find the data they used or a reference to where it could
be found and they rarely provided the methods they used and when they
did they did not say how they used it or what assumptions they made
nor did they explain their results. Very sloppy work by DR.
DR put
much effort into challenging T's Monte Carlo results, it was nearly
double theirs. But they did not provide the data they used nor the
method they used or what assumptions they made nor did they explain
their results. Again very sloppy work.
It seems to me that DR
missed the entire point of why the method was being used. T knew the
speed of the current near the line five pipe from the buoy data was
not fast enough to remove all of the dirt from under the many
unsupported lengths of pipe. This meant the average speed from the
buoy data must be masking the true range of the speed of the current.
For example if four speeds of 0, 0, 0, and 10 are averaged the result
is 2.5 but the average does not tell about the 10 nor the 0's. The
use of averages can give a very distorted view of what is actually
happening.
Many years ago I had a friend who was a ship wreck buff
and he told me that the current in the straits was very strong which
to me meant much greater than the 1.5 result given by DR.
If DR is
unwilling to accept that fact I would like to know how they explain
the loss of all the dirt from under line five.
By laying line 5 on
the bottom of the straits the pipe create turbulence that was not
there before and it is the same for each anchor.
It is my guess
that the turbulence caused by the current speed is causing the
failure of the screw anchors as well. If my guess is correct the dirt
will continue to be washed out from underneath line five and will
cause more anchors to fail. As a result line five will fail. It is
not a question if, but when. From my experience in the oil industry I
know all pipelines will leak, it is a matter of how fast corrosion
damages the pipe. The speed of the current puts stress on line five
which increases the speed of corrosion which again will cause line
five to fail.
DR disagreed with T's determination of the angle of
the pipe from a picture as it was moved into the straits. They said
his method could not be done because of the camera angle. T used a
geometric analysis. I did not ask him to explain because I have used
a branch of mathematics called perspective geometry. Anyone can do it
provided the picture has a measuring stick. In this case the
measuring stick is the pipe. The pipe will be the same diameter no
matter the perspective. I do not understand how DR could have failed
to know this.
Over all I think DR did a very sloppy job, they
were not very professional, and their report is not worth the paper
it was printed on.
Return to Oil table of contents
A10J16 A Pipeline Through Afghanistan!
You can't build pipelines through mountains. What about the CA aqueduct? All right I will modify my statement . Oil pipelines through mountains are not economically feasible.
First, what makes a fluid flow?
A
difference in pressure makes a fluid flow, most of the time gravity
creates the pressure difference because of a difference in elevation.
This is the principle of a water tower and a siphon. When you open a
faucet in your home, the pressure at the faucet is near zero while
the pressure in the pipe is much greater so the water flows out of
the faucet.
A pump can create pressure, but remember the pump does
not make the fluid flow, a difference in pressure does. If the pump
does not create enough pressure to make a difference in pressure the
pump can spin or push forever and the fluid will not move.
Second,
you need to know about pressure drop. Many factors contribute to
pressure drop. One such factor is the friction between the walls of
the pipe and the fluid. The effect of friction is additive, so the
pressure drop increases with distance. As the distance from the high
pressure point increases there will be a distance at which the
friction will reduce the pressure to zero and the fluid will stop
flowing. If a hole were drilled in the top of the pipe, at that
point, the fluid would not come out because there would be no
difference in pressure. Before the zero pressure point is reached
another pumping station is required to restore the pressure
difference to keep the fluid flowing.
Because a pressure
difference makes a fluid flow, a fluid always flows from high
pressure to low pressure, in other words, a fluid in a pipe under
pressure always flows 'down hill' no matter which direction the pipe
is pointing, it always goes from high to low pressure.
Third, the
characteristics of the fluid must be considered. If the fluid is not
compressible its volume will remain stable under changes in pressure.
If a fluid is compressible its volume changes with changes in
pressure and its flow may become turbulent which increases the
friction which in turn increases the pressure drop. During changes in
volume pressure will not be transferred effectively, again adding to
the pressure drop.
If a fluid is volatile it can vaporize and the
bubbles may cause turbulence and increase the pressure drop. Also a
bubble will not transmit pressure effectively. If enough of the fluid
vaporizes it can create a large enough bubble to cause vapor lock
which will decrease the effectiveness of a siphon. Volatile fluids
require enough pressure over the entire length of the pipe to prevent
vaporization.
The lower the viscosity of the fluid the lower the
friction between the molecules of the fluid and with the pipe wall
and the lower the pressure needed to make it move. Most fluids become
more viscus as the temperature decreases. Obviously, if the fluid
freezes it will not move.
When leaks are considered the surface
tension and the viscosity are important, the higher the surface
tension and the higher the viscosity the higher the pressure of fluid
must be to over come the pressure drop caused by the surface tension
and the viscosity before a leak can occur.
Now compare pumping
water to pumping oil. Water is not compressible and it is not
volatile and it consists of a single molecule so it has a single
freezing point. Crude oil is compressible, it is volatile, and it is
a mutually soluble mixture of different hydrocarbons so crude oil has
multiple freezing points, one for each different hydrocarbon. Also,
water has a high surface tension which means it doesn't leak as
easily as a fluid with a low surface tension, oil has a very low
surface tension, although the viscosity of oil is higher so that
tends to off set the lower surface tension. In addition, if water
leaks, in most cases it is not a problem. The CA aqueduct has many
leaks but it would cost more to repair them than the amount of water
lost would cost. This is not true for oil, the cost of the oil lost
is very high not to mention the environmental costs and clean up
costs.
This means that the oil going through a mountain pipeline
must be kept under pressure at all times to prevent it from
vaporizing and creating bubbles which increases pressure drop or
causing vapor lock which increases pressure drop and heated to
prevent its viscosity from increasing which increases pressure drop
and to keep it from slowly freezing in the pipeline. In fact some oil
is so viscus it can only be moved by using a shovel.
Look at a map
and tell me how it makes any sense to build a pipeline through
Afghanistan. There is no source of oil, no ports, and no population
with a standard of living to use it.
Politicians, pundits, and
bureaucrats can say anything because they don't have to pay for it or
do it.
Another thing they do not consider is the cost of
inventory. Someone must pay for the fluid in the pipeline. A large
diameter pipeline can hold a barrel per foot. Multiply that by the
cost of oil and the amount is staggering. This is exactly why the
Alaskan pipeline goes through Alaska and not down the eastern side of
the rocky mountains, the interest on the cost of the oil in the line
was to large.
Consider the difference between the CA aqueduct and
an oil pipeline through the mountains. The water to be transported is
already at a high point and if the water is pumped to the highest
point it does not have to be pumped again if all of the rest of the
pipe is lower than the highest point, the principle of a water tower,
gravity will supply the pressure difference. Oil would require more
pumping stations because of its greater pressure drop which means
there must be a source of power to run the pumping stations and if it
is viscus it will require some means of heating the oil in the
pipeline.
So for all practical purposes the CA aqueduct is not a
pipeline going through the mountains or over the mountains it is a
pipeline going down the mountains. But to pipeline oil through
Afghanistan the oil would begin at a very low level and would have to
be pumped up to a very high level before the pipeline could operate
by the principle of a water tower as the CA aqueduct does. The
initial pumping would be very expensive. Plus it would have to be
heated.
There is more to this story than I have said and if you
would like to know more I recommend that you consult a text book on
hydrocarbons, hydraulics, and fluid dynamics.
Because of oil's
volatility, viscosity, compressibility, multiple melting points, and
cost it is much more expensive to pipeline than water and makes
pipelining oil through mountains economically infeasible.
Return to Oil table of contents
I don't know whether to laugh or cry
when our politicians and bureaucrats make the following statements,
'We need more refineries', 'We need more natural gas pipelines', 'We
need more electric power transmission lines'. Such simple solutions
to very complex problems are sure to fail. The only statement they
got right, but for the wrong reason is, 'We do need more natural gas
pipelines' because we should be using natural gas instead of oil
where ever possible.
Change each statement into a question 'Why
don't we have more... The first response to all three is, 'Not in my
backyard'. If they are going to be built, they must be in someone's
back yard. Who is going to volunteer. The second response is 'Will
there be enough electricity, natural gas, or crude oil to justify
building them. The third response is 'Will there be a market for the
products.'
During the last energy crisis, the electric utility
industry learned that it was profitable not to build more electric
power plants. They could earn more money when they encouraged their
customers to conserve electricity and their customers saved money by
doing so. The same is true for natural gas and oil industries as
well. Also, following the previous energy crisis, the oil industry
learned that we can use less oil, our oil consumption dropped from 20
million barrels of oil per day to 17 million barrels of oil per day
as we reduced the weight of our cars. We don't need eight miles to
the gallon vehicles, so why should the oil industry build more
refineries, when the industry knows we could conserve and make
additional refineries unnecessary and a waste of money.
We are
right back where we started, we are consuming 20 million barrels a
day of crude oil because we went back to being energy hogs. This is
the seventh time we have gone through large price increases in crude
oil, can't we learn. We don't need two ton plus vehicles to transport
one person to any destination. We don't need four wheel drive
vehicles on super highways. We don't need a pick up truck to
transport a bag of groceries. We don't need eight hundred plus square
feet of living space per person in a home, we don't need to air
condition an entire house when we only use about three rooms, and we
certainly don't need to air condition an empty building.
When we
build such large homes, does anyone ask, 'Where are we going to get
the energy in thirty years to operate these large homes?' Oh, you are
not going to live in them that long! Well who is going to buy them if
they can't get the energy to operate them?
Does anyone have any
idea how many people would go hungry if any large city went without
electricity for more than three days? We don't have an energy crisis,
we have a knowledge crisis.
What would you call people who are
intelligent and have the data, but don't analyze it or they analyze
it and their response is incongruent with the result of the
analysis?
A politician's attention span last only until the next
opinion poll, industry's attention span is as long as the next
earnings report, and a bureaucrat must be politically correct, so who
is going to educate the public?
As the world population increases
and everyone uses more energy, we will not have enough energy for
everyone, we will need to switch to alternative energy sources. We
can't do that in a few years. We need at least ten years, maybe
twenty, to build the new infrastructure. We must conserve our fossil
fuels now, we must deplete our fossil fuels gradually so we have time
to phase in alternative fuels so our economy will not crash while we
wait for the new infrastructure to be built.
But we must choose
alternatives carefully. For example Ethanol from corn. Politicians
have a very short time horizon which leads them to move to fast to
make sure they are on the band wagon.
There is absolutely no
excuse for not making a feasibility study on any project. It doesn't
have to be complicated, it can be what engineers call a back of the
envelope calculation.
For ethanol from corn it would go some thing
like this. Corn has BTU value of about 7000 per pound, at 56 pounds
per bushel gives 392,000 BTU's per bushel. Divide this by the BTU's
per gallon of gasoline, about 140,000, giving one gallon of ethanol
the equivalent of 2.8 gallons of gasoline.
Now if our entire corn
crop for the year 2004 of 11,800,000,000 bushels was converted into
ethanol it would have been consumed in 39 days. That is a little over
ten per cent of our demand and what would we feed all of our cattle,
pigs, and chickens.
If this calculation had been done we would not
be subsidizing ethanol made from corn.
Now the above calculation
is not very accurate, but any refinement would reduce the amount of
ethanol not increase it because one of the rules of nature is 'there
is no free lunch'. In other words you can never get more energy out
of system than you put in. Again, in other words, the total BTU
content of ethanol produced can never exceed the amount of BTU's in
the corn used to make it. This places an upper limit on the system
which cannot be exceeded.
It is this type of stupidity that makes
me go ballistic. The above calculation is an extremely simple and
fast feasibility check and I find it completely incomprehensible that
our politicians and pundits are not able to do it.
PS: I sent the ethanol calculation to several newspapers in April of 05, guess how many published it?
I don't want our economy to crash, but
if we don't start using our brains we will have a depression that
will make '29 and '08 look like a Sunday school picnic.
At 40
million barrels a day we were dumping excess carbon dioxide into the
atmosphere, now at 100 million barrels a day we are pouring carbon
dioxide into it. Remember, for each molecule of carbon dioxide we
dump into the atmosphere, we are removing a molecule of oxygen, I'm
rather fond of breathing, how about you? A conjunction of major
tsunamis will occur in 2020. A solar sun spot cycle and with an
increase in global heating there is a possibility of drought, the
maxing out of oil production, a world population over eight billion,
and the baby boomers retiring. Are we ready?
Return to Oil table of contents