[sejarzo]

Quote:

Originally Posted by scompton /img/forum/go_quote.gif Hopefully, as the price goes up, they'll switch to something else like perennial switch grass, which is supposed to be a lot more efficient than corn anyway. With corn, they only use the kernels. With switch grass, they can use the whole plant. At least, I've read this somewhere. I'm far from an expert.

There's a significant technology gap with cellulosic ethanol (that is, based on grasses, plant stalks, paper trash, whatever) that remains to be overcome before the economics work out....that is, unless oil goes up to $120 a barrel or so and stays there!

There is more slightly more weight in the kernels of a dry harvested corn plant than in the rest of the plant, believe it or not.

 

[scompton]

Quote:

Originally Posted by sejarzo /img/forum/go_quote.gif There's a significant technology gap with cellulosic ethanol (that is, based on grasses, plant stalks, paper trash, whatever) that remains to be overcome before the economics work out....that is, unless oil goes up to $120 a barrel or so and stays there! There is more slightly more weight in the kernels of a dry harvested corn plant than in the rest of the plant, believe it or not.

I did say I'm not expert, and I proved it

 

[tomb]

Quote:

Originally Posted by marvin /img/forum/go_quote.gif We're not in a recession yet, so why exactly is the term depression being bandied about? And really, the last doom and gloom recession cycle was in 2001 with the rapid decompression of the dot com boom. $5 trillion in market value got wiped out in that cycle. We survived that just fine. As for energy policy, that's a self inflicted wound. If we'd get off of our duffs and pursue energy independence through coal gassification, shale oil, and nuclear power, we wouldn't even be talking about this.

Agreed - except for a bit of the part on energy - Nuclear is the only thing that could get us out of the energy problem. Liquid lithium control rods seem to make them fail-safe: witness the Toshiba garage reactor. That, or else drill in ANWR or the Gulf.

Coal gassification is a notoriously dirty process. Both it and shale will raise prices much higher than they are now. Turn every square inch of farm land into an ethanol source and it won't cover 2% of our oil usage. Ethanol is a big lie foisted upon all of us to raise crop prices for farmers.

Most of what you are hearing is hype meant to ratchet up the fear so that we all bail out the mortgage foreclosures.

 

[marvin]

Quote:

Originally Posted by tomb /img/forum/go_quote.gif Agreed - except for a bit of the part on energy - Nuclear is the only thing that could get us out of the energy problem. Liquid lithium control rods seem to make them fail-safe: witness the Toshiba garage reactor. That, or else drill in ANWR or the Gulf. Coal gassification is a notoriously dirty process. Both it and shale will raise prices much higher than they are now. Turn every square inch of farm land into an ethanol source and it won't cover 2% of our oil usage. Ethanol is a big lie foisted upon all of us to raise crop prices for farmers.

Granted, nuclear is good, but there's the niggling problem of motor vehicles. Battery technology is nowhere near ready for prime time and neither is the electrical grid. A native source for gasoline and petroleum products would go a long way towards near term energy independence. ANWR and Gulf sources are a start, but there's nowhere near enough energy in those sources to even make a dent in our imports.

As far as economic concerns go, Oil shale and coal liquefaction have break even points of ~ $40-50/barrel. That's a hell of a lot lower than the current ~ $100/barrel oil we're looking at in the near future. Supplies aren't an issue either. With proven reserves of oil shale and coal in the US, we could be running our internal combustion engines for a very long time.

As far as pollution goes, coal gasification/liquefaction plants product much less pollution and more energy per unit coal compared to conventional coal burning plants. Syngas is also pretty clean NOx/SOx-wise compared to what it'd be replacing. Green it ain't, especially factoring in the additional coal mining needed to support them. But better than what we already have going and it's that or mucking with such great countries like Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Russia, and Venezuela...

 

[slwiser]

Have we even had two quarters of negative growth yet? I think not.

This is a bit premature at this point. I think we could be headed in that direction but to say we are there is a joke or someone attempting to create more fear to weaken the US at a time in which we need all the focus our economy to support it.

 

[Uncle Erik]

Things aren't going to improve until the housing prices normalize and the dollar stabilizes.

My metric for housing is rental prices - the note should be around or a little under what it would cost to rent. In some markets, rents are like 30% of the mortgage. Until prices normalize, values will keep dropping and people will keep abandoning houses they're upside down on. Compounding that is the massive overbuilding by developers to sell to speculators. There's an oversupply and no demand, so prices drop further and magnify negative equity.

Compounding things further is the weak dollar. They haven't published the size of the money supply since 2006, so you know they're printing them like crazy. That's another reason prices are shooting up, especially for oil.

I don't see any easy way out. Depression might be too strong a word, but I worry there will be a slump that sticks around for 10-15 years.

 

[sejarzo]

Quote:

Originally Posted by marvin /img/forum/go_quote.gif As far as economic concerns go, Oil shale and coal liquefaction have break even points of ~ $40-50/barrel. ...

And the problem is that crude prices were unrealistically low for such a long time that development of those technologies languished for lack of funding (no urgency = no money!) Now, "all of a sudden", those start to look pretty good, but the technology isn't fully developed to exploit them yet.

I'm a chemical engineer whose job depends on the availability of petroleum-based starting materials...so my take is that oil is becoming far too valuable to burn, thus we must invest in technologies to get us away from petroleum as the only meaningful source for transportation. And corn-based ethanol isn't a solution.

 

[AlanY]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Uncle Erik /img/forum/go_quote.gif They haven't published the size of the money supply since 2006, so you know they're printing them like crazy. That's another reason prices are shooting up, especially for oil.

Before anyone argues that the M3 money supply numbers were useless and roughly the same information can be derived from M1 and M2 (this is the common counterargument to your position), the key thing is that M3 was becoming an ever-increasing proportion of the total money supply:
Image:Components of the United States money supply2.svg - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
M3 went from 5% of the money supply in 1970 to roughly 35% in 2005. Now that they've stopped reporting it, it's impossible to know how large it is. Has it ballooned to 45% of the total money supply? Has it gone down to maybe 25%? No one will know for sure if we don't measure.

 

[blessingx]

I learned a great deal on the sub-prime mortgage crisis from this short Fresh Air episode. Worth a listen.

 

[Roam]

Quote:

Originally Posted by marvin /img/forum/go_quote.gif As far as economic concerns go, Oil shale and coal liquefaction have break even points of ~ $40-50/barrel. That's a hell of a lot lower than the current ~ $100/barrel oil we're looking at in the near future. Supplies aren't an issue either. With proven reserves of oil shale and coal in the US, we could be running our internal combustion engines for a very long time.

Oil shale is a net energy loss process, it takes more energy to extract oil from oil shale than there is in the oil thus produced. The US would have to build around 50-75 nuclear generating stations to provide the energy needed to extract enough oil to replace its imports. There are currently 100 nuke plants in the US. That doesn't even take into account the infrastructure needed for the production facilities. Oh, and all that infrastructure isn't getting built overnight, it will be the work of generations. We don't even have the tools to build the infrastructure on a large scale, nor do we have the tools to build those tools. In other words, pipedream.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Uncle Erik /img/forum/go_quote.gif Things aren't going to improve until the housing prices normalize and the dollar stabilizes.

Housing prices will not stabilize until they've fallen to 2.5 to 3 times of the yearly household income. That is the maximum sustainable price of housing, it is supported by many years of historic economical data. Look up the median income in your area and compare it to the price of housing, that's how far prices will have to fall from current levels. We're not there yet, not even close.

 

[marvin]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Roam /img/forum/go_quote.gif Oil shale is a net energy loss process, it takes more energy to extract oil from oil shale than there is in the oil thus produced. The US would have to build around 50-75 nuclear generating stations to provide the energy needed to extract enough oil to replace its imports. There are currently 100 nuke plants in the US. That doesn't even take into account the infrastructure needed for the production facilities. Oh, and all that infrastructure isn't getting built overnight, it will be the work of generations. We don't even have the tools to build the infrastructure on a large scale, nor do we have the tools to build those tools. In other words, pipedream.

EROEI with oil shale depends on method. The old strip, crush, bake method's EROEI was rather bad with a worst case estimate of 1:1.4, but current in-situ methods are much better. Shell claims 3.5:1 in at it's test sites with direct heating elements. Raytheon claims 4.5:1 with RF heating units. Yield per unit area is also greatly improved. Neither is as good as conventional oil, but certainly competitive with Canada's tar sands.

As far as timeline, Canada went from no tar sand oil production in 1967 to 25% of our oil imports today. In 2006 they produced 1 million barrels a day. By 2015 they expect to be producing 3 million barrels a day. Compare Canada's industrial base to ours, and it's absurd to say that it'd take generations to get this done unless we dawdle or shoot ourselves in the face with paperwork and lawsuits.

Also, why the fixation on nuclear plants to power the refineries? There is a very good power sources at every oil shale location as oil shale burns nicely in steam turbine plants without need for conversion into crude oil first. Sure nuclear power isn't ready for the big time in the US, but that's hardly a show stopper.

It's only a pipe dream if you don't know the facts on the ground.

 

[AlanY]

Quote:

Originally Posted by marvin /img/forum/go_quote.gif As far as timeline, Canada went from no tar sand oil production in 1967 to 25% of our oil imports today. In 2006 they produced 1 million barrels a day. By 2015 they expect to be producing 3 million barrels a day. Compare Canada's industrial base to ours, and it's absurd to say that it'd take generations to get this done unless we dawdle or shoot ourselves in the face with paperwork and lawsuits.

This isn't a true picture of oil sands production. In 2006, oil sands production of actual crude substitutes was just 518 thousand barrels/day:
Oil Sands - Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers
You only get above 1 million barrels if you include bitumen that's such low quality it cannot be upgraded... i.e. not a substitute for crude.

The US imports 13.15 million barrels/day of crude:
https://www.cia.gov/library/publicat.../print/us.html
That means oil sands production is a mere 3.9% of US oil imports, not 25% as you claim.

What's more, there has been enormous lead time and investment to get to that point... the Syncrude project has been going since 1964. If you ever get a chance to visit Ft. McMurray, take it... the amount of work required to generate those 518 thousand barrels is truly staggering. By 2020 -- 56 years after the project started -- the estimated production from the oil sands is only 3.8 million barrels/day, roughly half of which is un-upgradeable bitumen:
http://www.capp.ca/raw.asp?x=1&dt=PDF&dn=130484

Oil shale will certainly be exploited, but I don't expect to see significant production coming on line from oil shale in the next 40 years. It's no magic bullet.

 

[Roam]

Quote:

Originally Posted by marvin /img/forum/go_quote.gif EROEI with oil shale depends on method. The old strip, crush, bake method's EROEI was rather bad with a worst case estimate of 1:1.4, but current in-situ methods are much better. Shell claims 3.5:1 in at it's test sites with direct heating elements. Raytheon claims 4.5:1 with RF heating units. Yield per unit area is also greatly improved. Neither is as good as conventional oil, but certainly competitive with Canada's tar sands.

Claims which have never been verified. There is no data anywhere to support those numbers. I still have my SPE and API subscriptions, there is nothing in their publications to support the claims made by Shell and Raytheon.

Quote:

As far as timeline, Canada went from no tar sand oil production in 1967 to 25% of our oil imports today. In 2006 they produced 1 million barrels a day. By 2015 they expect to be producing 3 million barrels a day. Compare Canada's industrial base to ours, and it's absurd to say that it'd take generations to get this done unless we dawdle or shoot ourselves in the face with paperwork and lawsuits.

1967 is over 40 years ago, and closing in on two generations. 40 years to go from zero to a million barrels a day. 40 YEARS. As for 3 million bblpd by 2015, not happening, period. The infrastructure does not exist and can't be built that fast, nevermind the fact that the natural gas required to extract and upgrade bitumen to useable crude oil simply ISN'T THERE, and neither is the water. We'll be lucky to reach 2 million bblpd in the next seven years, 3 million is completely out of the question.

Quote:

Also, why the fixation on nuclear plants to power the refineries? There is a very good power sources at every oil shale location as oil shale burns nicely in steam turbine plants without need for conversion into crude oil first. Sure nuclear power isn't ready for the big time in the US, but that's hardly a show stopper.

Yes, let's burn the resource we're trying to extract and process, absolutely ****ing brilliant, as if the EROEI on oil shale isn't low enough already. So instead of plugging your computer into a wallsocket, let's plug an electric boiler into it and use the steam to run a turbine, which then powers the generator to provide the power for your computer. That's how stupid it is.

Quote:

It's only a pipe dream if you don't know the facts on the ground.

I've worked for Schlumberger, Shell and Imperial Oil, I know the facts a lot better than you do.

 

[XGJFilmsX]

we are no where close to the great depression

how could anyone say that

 

[markl]

"We have nothing to fear, but fear itself".

We are not headed for anything like the Great Depression; however, one thing is certain-- the more we hype the economic downturn, the more we fret about it, the more we over-react by reducing spending, the worse it will be. 50% of economics is psychology. We need to get a grip. The USA isn't going anywhere, the world (oil producers, our major trading partners like China and India) will bail us out, but we will continue to lose control over over "our" financial institutions and go deeper into debt.

We spend money like a European country, but won't allow ourselves to be taxed. This vicious cycle has caught up with us finally, and tough but necessary decisions will have to be made.

No more trillion dollar wars put on ye olde credit carde.