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Guest Post: Doug Casey Uncovers The Real Price Of Peak Oil
Submitted by Doug Casey of Casey Research,
Doug Casey Uncovers the Real Price of Peak Oil
Doug Casey, chairman of Casey Research and expert on crisis investing, is on the search for real wealth – not investments in companies that push around paper. In this exclusive interview with The Energy Report, Casey shares his pragmatic take on what's next for oil, gas, and nuclear power.
The Energy Report: There will be a Casey Research Summit on Navigating the Politicized Economy in Carlsbad, California, in September. At the last conference, Porter Stansberry caused some excitement with his argument that oil could go to $40/barrel (bbl). What's your view?
Doug Casey: We like to have a range of defensible views represented at our conferences. But personally, I don't think it's realistic to suggest oil prices will drop as low as $40/bbl.
I am of the opinion that the Hubbert peak-oil theory is correct. In the 1950s, M. King Hubbert projected that US oil production would start declining in the 1970s, and he was accurate. Then he projected that in the mid-2000s, the world's production of light, sweet crude would start declining. He was quite correct about that, too.
There will always be plenty of oil at some given price, but to produce oil – even conventional, shallow, light sweet crude – now costs close to $40/bbl in many places.
It's extremely expensive to produce oil through unconventional techniques like horizontal drilling and fracking. Producing oil from tar sands is very expensive and problematical.
Drilling 15,000 feet under the ocean is very expensive and has a lot of risk.
Drilling in politically unstable jurisdictions with sparse infrastructure is neither cheap nor fun. We're talking about production costs of at least $80/bbl in many cases.
I don't think oil is going down much from here.
Let's not, in addition, forget that it's the most political commodity in the world, and that most of it still comes from the Middle East, where tensions will remain high.
I'm neutral to bullish on oil. I'm not bearish at all.
TER: How will US natural gas impact oil prices?
DC: The thing with natural gas is that it's almost an entirely local market. Oil is very transportable, very fungible – it's a world market. Oil prices are relatively consistent – say within 20-30% worldwide. But the price of gas differs by hundreds of percent around the globe because it's not very transportable. It doesn't seem that's going to change in the near future.
The price of gas is going to stay low in the US for some time because of new technologies, namely horizontal drilling and fracking, which allow the exploitation of vast new deposits. These deposits can produce large amounts of hydrocarbons, albeit at relatively high cost. As soon as prices start to rise, however, wells that have been shut because of low prices will start producing again – and that will keep a lid on gas prices for some time to come.
TER: Do you see potential for the US to become a natural-gas exporter at some point in the future?
DC: The problem with gas is that, unlike oil, it's hard to move and inconvenient to export. There are basically two ways that you can move gas. One is via pipelines. That doesn't work very well across oceans. The second is by liquefying it and putting it in liquefied natural gas (LNG) tankers and then transporting it to some place where it is re-gasified again, but that is expensive and it's actually quite dangerous because the LNG tankers are almost like floating bombs.
I'm not convinced that gas is ever going to become a truly international commodity – at least not until it's much more expensive.
The idea of the US becoming a huge gas exporter is a politically driven fantasy. The government throws ideas out if it makes them look good. We bat them back when we weigh up the realities, then it's up to the reader to decide. It's why I think our summits and the world-shaping topics we discuss are so important.
TER: Can we assume that you're not as bullish on gas as you are on oil?
DC: Yes. I'm much more bullish on oil. Oil is a much more concentrated energy than gas. Oil is needed for cars. It's needed for airplanes. It's needed for everything. Gas is mostly used for utilities and heating. Oil is both a much denser energy and a much more important form of energy.
TER: Speaking of concentrated types of energies, you have called nuclear "the safest, cheapest, and cleanest form of mass power generation," yet we still haven't seen the uranium price return. What's your view on the future of uranium?
DC: I have to be bullish simply because of reality. It really is the safest, cheapest, and cleanest form of mass power, but unfortunately it's also the object of mass political hysteria. Many misinformed but well-funded nongovernmental organizations simply hate uranium, for purely ideological reasons.
Actually, thorium would be an even better form of nuclear power than uranium. We've been using uranium primarily because you can't make nuclear bombs out of thorium, and the US was building up its nuclear arsenal from World War II on. This is how uranium came to be used for nuclear power plants instead of thorium, but that's a whole different discussion.
Of course, now the disaster at Fukushima is held up as proof that nuclear isn't viable; the Japanese and German governments are panicking and shutting down their nuclear plants as quickly as they can. But doing so is extremely foolish.
To start, Fukushima used 50-year-old technology. That plant was – like most plants in the world today – an antique, two generations behind current designs. It was also poorly located. It should never have been put right on the ocean. Other design mistakes were made. Still, even over the next decade, only a few people will die from radiation released, whereas at least 20,000 died from the earthquake and tsunami.
But the real question is: if nuclear is not going to be used for mass power generation, where is the power going to come from?
Most of the world's power is generated by coal, but coal is extremely dirty and dangerous in every way possible – in the production process, and in the residues that it leaves both on the land and in the air.
In an industrial world with seven billion people, the only energy source that makes sense is nuclear power. Sure, you can use wind and solar from time to time and in certain places. But those technologies are extremely expensive, and they absolutely can't solve the world's energy problems. Certainly not when electrical grids start going down, as they did in India last month. That's why India and China will be building scores of nuclear plants in the years to come.
TER: Doug, thanks for sharing your insights. I greatly appreciate it.
DC: Thanks for having me. I encourage your readers to attend the Navigating the Politicized Economy Summit. If you can't make it, the audio collection is a great way to benefit from the information the conference's 28 expert presenters will be sharing – and if you preorder, you can save $100. It's a great deal.
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"I am of the opinion that Hubbert's Peak Oil Theory is correct."
This always baffles me.
Hubbert said that production of oil will increase, peak, and decline.
Oil is a finite commodity. If you don't believe that, then you're not based in reason and there's no sense presenting you with rational argument.
We are extracting oil.
Taken together, OF COURSE oil production will peak then decline.
This is not a "theory." It's a statement akin to saying to your fat friend, "if you keep eating those potato chips, the bag will run out."
The only interesting question is WHEN?
Gasoline at all time high price in August while U.S. gasoline usage has dropped significantly since 08.
It's right there in front of you people. Don't be afraid.
Just as an FYI, Exxon, Chevron, Total . . . the "big firms" don't explore anymore. They outsource that.
The companies who get that money are the ones who know what is going on. Exxon knows what these companies tell them about their leases and how they are dying. These companies actually look at the gravimeter imagery. These are the companies that understand that field extraction rate decline decides everything and new discoveries . . . less and less.
Look them up. Look at presentations their technical people make. These folks are the ones who understand continental drift and where the rifts and rivers and seashores were 180 million years ago. These are the guys who image rock down several miles in those locations.
These are the guys . . . who don't trot economists out to talk about a geological reality. Listen to them.
First off, IDNJY.
Finite is a very, very large container. Especially if all of those hydro-carbon chains are produced deep within the Earth as a by-product of planetary mechanics. If so, the only meaningful numbers deal with rate of production, and sustainable extraction.
We aren't going to run out of carbon for a long, long, time.
You won't ever run out of oil. But you won't have any to burn.
You simply have to understand petroleum engineering.
You drill for a reservoir of porous rock and you drain it. Then you drill for a smaller reservoir (clearly you drill the big kahuna first). Then a smaller one and a smaller one and a smaller one. Pretty soon, and the operative word is indeed soon, you are expending more drilling BTUs than the total that comes out of what has become a small bubble.
This Is Not An Economics Problem. It's BTUs, not dollars.
You stop drilling when the bubbles are too small. And then you have no more oil to burn, but there is still "plenty" left. It's all right there, in the rock under your feet.
You just can't have it. You didn't run out. There's lots there. You just can't have it.
The solution? Star Trek. There must be transporters or 6+ billion people are going to die and somewhat soon.
And then you go back to the first reservoir and find it has more oil in it than it did when you left. WFT is that all about?
http://metaoceanic.blogspot.com/2010/06/mystery-of-eugene-island.html
Already addressed and debunked as drainage from adjoining fields.
If this was a viable mechanism, Oklahoma and Illinois and Pennsylvania and hell the list is long, would not be empty.
You can buy empty well leases in Oklahoma for about $100. Go buy one. Drill through the 1 mile long concrete plug. See if you earn a return.
You don't think in the 85 years Oklahoma has been dying that they didn't try looking in empty wells again? Before they were plugged?
It has been tried hundreds of times. Empty is empty.
FYI The link feralserf quoted gives the answer in the fourth paragraph. The link is most definitely NOT pro abiotic.
Dude I specifically said that if you believe that oil is not finite then you're not capable of the reasoning required to understand the issue.
To say oil is produced by "planetary mechanics" is equivalent to saying gold is produced by birds shitting it out. If you want to believe that oil is produced by magic or god or something, then you have no worries about anything, and this conversation is not for you, because you don't subscribe to science.
The size of the "finite container" to which you refer is irrelevant. All that matters is extraction rate. If there a bazillion barrels of oil but you can only pull out a barrel a day, the that deposit won't affect price rise.
In case, oil is 5 times more expensive than it was in 2000 and gasoline is 4 times more expensiven than it was in 2002 and your god-based theories and magic don't appear to account for that.
Priced in ... drumroll please ... worthless US fiat!
Bingo! We have a winner! This guy actually gets it.
Since 2000, the price of a barrel of crude oil is up by a factor of 6-8, priced in USD.
For Gold, its up by a factor of 4.
How do you explain the addition crude price increase, if solely from dollar inflation?
Porter Stansberry !!! Stop reading right now......
lol check this out Samsung sends 30 trucks
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2012/aug/29/apple-samsung-truc...
No, Samsung did not try to pay Apple its $1bn fine in nickelsOf course Samsung didn't pay the fine in nickels. That would be silly. Everyone knows that nickels are worth more than a nickel.
Try using some of those worthless state/presidential quarters instead Samsung. :)
Actually, they're currently over-valued, being worth only $0.0486.
SELL!
There I go again. Buying high and selling low.
When will I learn? :)
OT, but i am seeing (not hearing on purpose) another LAWYER / AG for FLA, spew some obvious bull shit about jobs and job creation, so he can run for Senate.
The fucker looks like he doesn't even have any hair on his ass, or a day over 25.
But he wants to be in charge!!
Holy fuck, this just gets worse and worse and worse and worse and worse and worse..........
"Holy fuck, this just gets worse and worse and worse and worse and worse and worse.........."
To be grammatically correct it's "worser and worser."
Tuco
Hollywood Actress Sean Young Discusses Illuminati Secrets
http://sgtreport.com/2012/05/listen-actress-sean-young-reveals-illuminati-secrets/
[Ed. Note: If you want to jump into the thick of it fast forward to 12:40.]
“You will recognize actress Mary Sean Young from her roles in Blade Runner, No Way Out, Stripes, Dune, Wall Street and Ace Ventura, just to name a few.”
““In my opinion humanity is being prayed upon, I mean as a species. Not only by old satanic families like the Rothschilds and Rockefellers, Collins, Dupont, Warner, Russell, the world’s monarchies, the Vatican. But also prayed upon by these family’s employees, by governments, by the military, by banking institutions, by academia. So who does that leave? That’s all the people who aren’t wealthy, aren’t connected, aren’t educated, who are easy to manipulate, are easy to persecute and who don’t believe any of the issues which you cover on Red Ice. And that’s a problem. And that breaks my heart.” – Sean Young”
Recognising humanity has a cancer is the start of the battle.
“When he (Tesla) brought free energy to Thomas Edison and JP Morgan, JP Morgan said ‘well, how can we put a meter on it’. They didn’t want anything to do with it. They didn’t want to help improve society.”
JP Morgan and their ilk want to receive rent off of humanity.
“You are just a useless eaters to these people.”
“There has to be a mentality change in everybody.”
"preyed upon"
well she did mention the Vatican...so maybe it is prayed upon.
hahaha!
“There has to be a mentality change in everybody.”
Our minds are not enslaved. Yet if people do not exercise free thought and only parrot what they hear in the media then their minds are for rent as well.
We want freedom but don't want to sacrifice anything. Cancel your cable/satellite TV service. I have. And you people may argue...but, but...my kids, my wife, they NEED it!. I say...ESPECIALLY IF YOU HAVE A WIFE OR CHILDREN DO IT>>>DO IT YESTERDAY!
Going to an actress for tips about how society works is about as logic as going to a shoemaker for tips on how to act.
Not saying her message is wrong or right, just saying that her opinion on this subject has just as much value as that from a random person on the street.
My personal experience with actors and actrices is that outside their specific domain (acting) they're not any smarter or knowledgeable than the average person. In fact, given that their expertise is in the domain of controlling and expressing emotion, they might be slightly less good than average at rationalizing and logical thinking (though better at sensing, empathising and expressing themselves to others).
Japan has no oil and that, in the end, spells their end. It started in Dec 1941 as they found themselves cut off from US oil (the Saudi Arabia of the day) and had to secure other supplies (from Indonesia, with the US fleet in the way). So they bombed Pearl Harbor.
Oil. Oil. Oil. It is everything. Has been a century plus now and will be for about 20 more years, at which time the 800 million remaining humans will have found a way to get along without it.
Funny enough, there is tons of oil and gas under and around Sakhalin, which they had half of at the time.
A simple but effective solution to free the US from foreign oil: Just gradually convert all of today's diesel trucks to natural gas. Legislate that every new truck coming to market will run on NG. Provide tax credits to help with the transition. Provide tax credits to assist with building the NG infrastructure.
In less than 20 year the US will not have to import one drop of oil from Muslims who hate us or South American sociopathic tyrants. We’ll also be a net exporter and will not have a trade deficit and our energy needs will be solved.
This is easily achievable.
Glad you're not the dictator. That is anything but simple and is so far from a solution that it would make the problem worse.
You must be under the impression that we've got "100 years" of natural gas at "current rates of consumption."
Even at current consumption rates we don't have anything near 100 years worth but you're talking about increasing consumption drastically which would probably be burnt up by the end of your 20 year plan.
The US has many hundreds of years of natural gas. The progressives don't want you to know that because their true agenda is to destroy the energy infrastructure of the United States, and hence its economy. Hence all the lies about fracking.
Pop quiz:
1) Is the US currently a net importer or exporter of NG?
2) On a BTU basis, what fraction of US oil imports does current NG production correspond to?
-----
You played your hand and showed your colors when you rim jobbed Ann Coulter....
You do realize that natural gas at room temperature occupying the same volume as oil / diesel (whatever the tank size is on a truck) . . . one 42-gallon barrel of oil holds 5.6 million BTUs of energy and that same barrel of nat gas holds 5600 BTUs? That's 1000 times less energy.
To get past that you have to burn energy to compress it (at which point you'll have about 1/70th the energy of same sized tank of oil), or you must burn energy cryocooling it and enduring the 1% per day loss to heating in storage to make LNG, and after you do that tank holds 60% of the energy of the same size tank of diesel.
There is no conspiracy. Unless the one by God. He defined these BTU numbers. They are a law that Congress can't touch.
Nothing can be done about this. It's not something within human control.
Are you trying to claim that the technology is unrealistic? You do realize that we already *have* vehicles that are currently running on NG??? The state of Utah has more than 5000 NG vehicles and more than 70 filling stations.
Why do you babble specs and numbers that are irrelevant and extremely misleading? The technology obviously works. It's feasible and very workable, unlike those fairy tale windmills you guys peddle.
What is your REAL agenda here?
happy camper i'm with you.
you said: Why do you babble specs and numbers that are irrelevant and extremely misleading?
he said:one 42-gallon barrel of oil holds 5.6 million BTUs of energy and that same barrel of nat gas holds 5600 BTUs?
thats 55gal and thats not liquid nat. gas
None of those vehicles haul food from Iowa to NYC.
Stimulus money bought a handful of around-town cars.
Look, this is not an agenda thing. This is physics. If you truly think this works, go look deeply into the Honda Civic Nat Gas version.
There is essentially no trunk. The fuel tank has to be expanded to undo the 1/70th energy loss, and if you dig really deeply into the RANGE of the vehicle, you'll find that even with that zero trunk (which is where you haul things btw) volume left, the range still is only a fraction of the conventional Civic (that btw costs about $4K less).
Those are CNG vehicles. Compressed Natural Gas. The compression pressure is way above what is in the pipes that bring nat gas to your furnace, so these filling stations have to have some sort of compressor on site to compress whatever arrives over a longer period of time, and of course to a higher pressure than the car tank or it would not flow into the car tank.
These vehicles are an engineering joke. Compare their specs to a gasoline vehicle.
Now what you CAN do is say, okay we'll use these vehicles to just haul one or two people around town, and that will be a conventional car not burning oil and conserving.
Okay, but then you are required to sit down and do the math. All quotes of "we have 100 years of nat gas" means at current rate of consumption. If you try to move all transport to nat gas, you get slashed to 10 years.
It just doesn't work. Pretty much period.
Well, it would seem that NYC is going to fucking starve, along with Uttar Pradesh and CowShitHutz, Ivory Coast. I've seen plenty of tractors, albeit older, that run on LP.
So the fields will get worked, there just won't be as much to go around.
The fields will get worked at a fraction of the efficiency, until the inefficient gizmo you are using needs a spare part, and you discover trucks deliver those, too. As they also do for nuclear power plant spare parts. And the iron ore to make the parts that won't deliver.
A lot of people are going to die, soon. There will be no growth. There will be decline. The goal is to have the competition (everyone you know) decline faster than you.
Bit overly dramatic, I think. NDAA means the government can control who gets the diesel and gasoline, so I'm betting it goes to Government, Military, Wal-Mart, and Farmers, in that order, in the event of a shortage.
Worse case scenario, we bust out some steam engines from museums and put them back on the tracks. Around here we have a few, kept in working order for display purposes. Hopefully that's not abnormal.
Wood Gas can meet quite a bit of demand; replace some corn fields with poplars since you won't need so much corn if you massively cut back on beef production.
Worst case scenario, from an energy perspective, I see fewer cars on the roads, no more cruise ships and airfares taking a huge hike, but I don't see a Mad Max scenarion anytime soon.
If we have 10 years of drought, on the other hand, that's quite a different conundrum.
EDIT: talking about Anglo-America; Africa, Middle East, Sotuh Asia, all bets are off.
@ crash
I debunk you.. http://www.westport-hd.com/
"The 15L Westport HD natural gas engine offers class-leading emissions and performance by maintaining the same horsepower and torque as a diesel-fueled engine. The union of Westport high-pressure direct injection (HPDI) natural gas technology with the proven Cummins ISX long block, provides operators with power & torque required for hauling North America's heaviest loads—GCW 80,000 lbs and over."
And according to you it looks like Shell is pissing $300 million into the wind, just for fun.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/christopherhelman/2012/06/13/shell-investing-300m-to-fuel-lng-powered-trucks/
I'm familiar with the Cummins engine.
If you read that carefully you'll see there is no mention of range vs diesel. You can get horsepower by flowing nat gas very fast. That means emptying the tank faster. The Cummins plan is LNG, btw.
Now RDS is exploring LNG, and LNG holds about 60% of the magical 5.6 million BTUs/barrel number. A barrel of LNG is about 3something million BTUs. It's also cryocooled.
The losses kill you in LNG outside the tank. You have about 1% heating loss/day in any storage configuration. Your basic convenience store refills their underground gas tank weekly or sooner. If weekly for LNG, that is 7% loss from just sitting there. There is a general equation for LNG that says about 30% of the energy of the CH4 that comes out of the ground will disappear before you have a barrel of LNG. It is used up cooling down the gas and losing the liquid to daily heating.
So the losses are 30% before you get to the truck. Once you get to the truck, you are 40% less in energy content than diesel. Since the design is to achieve the horsepower, that means you stop to refill just less than 2X more often than a diesel truck and in a theoretical math perspective, that means you sort of need twice as many refilling stations nationwide as exist for conventional gas/diesel. Think about that. Doubling the number of places that sell fuel.
That's all with cryocooling in every single truckstop in America, plus cryocooled tanker trucks to fill the underground tanks at those truckstops. And there's also the need for LNG production architecture across the country wherever the nat gas pipelines go.
It's simply never going to happen. And about 1/2 the reason it cannot is never is a fairly short number of years. We will run out of time before we could conceivably do this.
What about Gas-To-Liquid? Just turn the nat gas into gasoline or diesel at about 50% conversion, and then use existing infrastructure and vehicles, rather than converting everything over.
And with that, why not Coal-To-Diesel, Wood-To-Diesel, Garbage-To-Diesel?
Also, more trains and less long haul trucks. No more overnight delivery. No more bananas flown in from Brazil to your local supermarket. No more 2 hour solo car commutes to work; telecommute or live closer to work.
I doubt the ability of humanity to pre-emptively adapt pre-crisis, but on the other hand, have quite a bit of faith in our ability to adapt once the crisis arrives.
You have some good points and worthwhile reading. However, I wasn't talking about converting small cars to NG. I was advocating converting our large diesel trucks to NG. Also, we disagree on how much NG is available and that particular issue isn't going to get settled here. One's viewpoint on that depends upon whose opinions you trust. I'm comfortable in the estimates of several generation's worth of NG to meet the energy needs of the US, but your point of view is worth discussion too.
Nod. It simply doesn't work. There isn't enough muscle in methane.
It, itself, also doesn't transport well. Gotta travel as LNG and cryocooling costs a lot of BTUs. Money doesn't matter. It's artificial measurement. But BTUs do matter. They predate money by millions of years. They largely define money. It is BTU issues that kill the approach.
These alternative vehicle efforts are squandering energy. We don't have it to spare on this silliness.
The worst part of it all is how mankind MUST respond. Phase I is military force to secure supply. Phase II is military force to suppress competing consumption. Phase III is you're out of fuel for conventional military force and you must go nuclear.
You're wrong, see above.
Just addressed.
Keep studying MDB's methods, my friend.
No worries, Ann Coulter said radiation is good for me.
"In an industrial world with seven billion people, the only energy source that makes sense is nuclear power."
I usually agree with Mr. Casey but he is "dead" wrong on this one. Most of the other nuke plants are decades old as well and has Doug found a better place to store spent fuel rods than inside the damn reactor housing!? Clean burning coal is still viable but Obama is shutting down those not owned by the cartel.
Tuco
Please explain what "clean burning coal" is?
I am reminded of it by a type of expression similar to "jumbo shrimp"....
There is no such thing as clean burning coal. It's just marketing.
marketing for a scubbing process that economically reduces the ROI of coal fired generation plants. FIre that shit up! Throw some goddamn hippies in there too, so we can have chromatic effects like those DuraLog things they used to sell in the 70's.
TO Doug Casey : nuclear power has one basic fundamental flaw exemplified by the sense of Einstein's remark :
"You want to use nuclear power with all its Pandora's box risk to boil WATER?
And you want the world to buy that idiocy?"
After Fukushima, where the world today sits on the perpetual edge of ecological disaster of unimagined proportions, aka reactor 4 Mox pile of 260 tons of rods that could pollute northern hemispshere beyond recognition; let alone Japan which trembles on the possibilty of other three reactors meltdown core magma polluting the underground; if EVER we lose the water level in that tank on #4, for whatever reason, we are all toast. Anybody who affirms now that nuclear is our holy grail, as if Fuku does not exist, is a certified NUT.
We urgently need to review our energy options in the perspective of peak oil, (I don"t subscribe to Abiotic oil theory), and Uranium based electrical power is not #1 on my list, whatever the price/kwh it generates, based on the "safe" scenario paradigm prevalent in first world logic, that neglects both Cherno and Fuku!
Wake up to the uncertainty principle relative to nuclear and ecological risks being a real parameter in energy game theory decision making!
TO Tuco : Coal to liquid or gas fuels is the route. Its now well studied and Sasol has shown the way to all.
FedGov makes an x-prize for a power plant that runs on "spent" fuel rods. Then it suddenly stops being "waste" and starts being "resources."
Problem solved.
Anagram of Ann Coulter: Real cunt, no?
Engili, that was a simple-minded statement intended to discredit Ann. According to radiation homeostasis theory, some temporary and moderate increase in radiation levels could possibly have some beneficial effects. We won't know if this true however until a good deal of sound scientific experimentation and analysis has taken place.
If a little complexity is a bit much for you to handle, perhaps you should just return to reading your simple-minded left-wing blogs and go back to living in your fantasy world.
How did you type this while your tongue was so firmly up Ann's anus? Or did she proofread it for you?
I know it takes a little bit of intelligence to try and make a thoughtful and well-reasoned post. Don't worry, now that I see your limitations I won't expect that of you anymore.
Why don't you go off and snort some powdered Americium or better yet, some Polonium....
And yes, natural radioactivity has no doubt played an important role in evolution, but not nearly as important as global disasters which have induced massive climate changes....
I forgot to mention, welcome to my ignore list. Someone who makes a statement like that cannot possibly have anything I would ever be interesting in reading. Tyler works hard to compile a great blog. He doesn't deserve this type of sewer talk posted here either.
Well I suggest you pull up stakes and GTFOOH and try living up to your monniker elsewhere...
http://trolololololololololololo.com/
...and tis one is rather fun lol
Do you have anything of substance to bring to the table or just a testimonial for the efficacy of Q-tips?
Ann does a fine job discrediting herself. She doesn't need any help from me. As far as simple minded .....to suggest that just because a person finds a paricular person vitrioliic and distasteful makes them either left wing or right wing ,well... that train of thought my friend is simple minded.
Ann Coulter is no conservative. She is a media whore of the elites. She and at least 10 other "conservative" pundits, on cue on almost the same day, trashed "birthers." My guess is Prince Al Waleed and the rest told her and the others that if they liked getting rich that they need to toe the line.
some temporary and moderate increase in radiation levels could possibly have some beneficial effects -
Yes, a great tan!
Fukishima would have been a nothing burger if
1) The geology of earth quakes in subduction zones had been known in the mid-60s
and
2) Given 1) they had budgeted about a 5% increase in cost by placing the complex on the other side of the Island...
Well Nukes were to be the bridge to solar and we fucked it royally....
3 trillion cubic feet of natural gas in storage. All time record...and rising. "Peak that" mr author.
I'm curious... do you really think that NG and oil are the same? i.e. ignorant
Or are you deliberately obfuscating things for a purpose?
Oh WOW! So less than a month of energy is stored? Great...
Do The Math...
It takes about 5,800 Cubic Feet of Natural Gas to equal the power of 1 barrel of sweet light crude.
3,000,000,000,000 / 5,800 = 517,241,379 barrels of crude oil.
The US uses 7,400,000,000 barrels per year.
517,241,379 / 7,400,000,000 = 0.06989748364 years worth of oil.
365 * 0.06989748364 = 25.5125815318 DAYS
Correct. Thank God somebody can still do arithmetic.
People forget that the USA uses 8 to 9 billion barrels a year, and that the world as a whole uses 30 billion barrels a year. Energetically, all the gas in the continental USA ballparks in at less than 5 years oil supply.
Nuclear is not cheap.
6 studies:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Nuke,_coal,_gas_generating_costs.png
Nuclear power is the most expensive in 5 studies out of 6.
Case closed. Decentralized renewable energy is the way to go. Yes, it is more expensive than the current grid price, but the killer issue here is that with renewable you do not need the grid.
Of course that would be bad for the big utility companies...
The gist of your argument is absolutely correct..
Long live solar! I mean silver! Oh wait
It's ok... I like both...
Decentralized solar and etc. work great. Especially solar thermal related tech.
Infinia Solar Power Promotional Video - YouTube - http://youtu.be/OVB7L6LgoOc
Infinia Solar Stirling engines @ SEC, New Delhi - YouTube - http://youtu.be/0m0jGLRkXnM
Ask them why their $15,000 stirling dishes aren't available to the public to buy.
And, even with the grid...your own personal smart grid controller could solve so many problems.
(Not to be confused with the fake "smart grid" NWO push)
http://transverter.com/
Each house could control it's *own* power consumption.
Add a bunch of panels, solar dishes, etc...your house only pulls from the grid when *you* dictate.
Central power use/demand would drop dramatically. No need for nukes.
All the technology is there. It's already invented.
The will to *not* use it is strong.
Either beg your corporate and govt. "leaders" for crumbs....or set yourself up.
Get educated in these systems and provide for yourself.
If not, get ready to freeze in the dark, Soviet (English?) style.
PS - Read the info here about the "smart grid" central planning SCAM:
The Smart Grid - http://bit.ly/RnmDqo
TRANSVERTER Microgrid - http://bit.ly/RnmMdm
Perfect example of corporate and govt. power setting up to control and rob you simultaneously.
+1
$15,000 for 3000W = $5 per watt. Solar Panels: as little as $1 per watt. Needs work.
thanks KK, you just provided a possible solution to a problem that just arose for me that initially seemed unsurmountable.
Plenty of oil left but pissing it against the wall transporting cheap plastic goods around the planet dont seem the best use for it. It is a finite resource and one that packs a big punch compared to LNG, Coal etc. Finding a replacement is going to take LOTS of time and LOTS of money. Keeping the lights on isnt the imediate problem, getting things from A-B cheaply is. Oil goes up the economy grinds to a halt, oil comes down the economy moves. This is going to be the picture of economy from now on.
Future generations will look back and say 'They did what with it'!!
...and if you think renewables are going to save the day they to use finite resources in the form of rare earths 97% of which are controled by China.
The rare earths aren't really so rare. China's been producing them NOT because they "have them all," but because they're fine with poisoning their environment.
If it's OK to turn the USA into Fukien, with toxic air and water, we can produce the stuff here, too, it'll just cost more.
We could still build electronics in the USA, also. It's not like this technology is not available to us. It's just that no one wants to pay for it.
How about we price everything in gold and then re-examine the thesis?
http://pricedingold.com/crude-oil/
That chart simply shows the catchup / time lag between movements of the spot prices of oil versus movements of the spot prices of gold. That is not volatility as the author suggests. That is a chart of phase differences, of oscillation.
So what you are telling me is the prices of two finite quantities extracted from the earth that have both peaked track each other remarkably well....
Knock me over with a feather....
Stating that nuclear is cheaper than solar doesn't make it so.
Look at end to end costs including security and waste disposal. Solar is much cheaper, oddly it even requires less land area. This country has vast sunny deserts and huge numbers of roof tops.
The challenge will not be creating enough energy with solar power. It will be delivering it to "unplugged" devices. Biodiesel from specially bred bacteria can help there.
If solar was much cheaper there would be far more solar plants. But let me guess, J P Morgan and the Koch Brothers are stopping it happening?
No, nuclear just has more subsidies than solar, because the nuclear titans lobby more and give more campaign donations, and have been in the business for much longer.
Not that I'm advocating for more subsidies for solar, but rather, a phasing out of all subsidies for all forms of energy.
also, when most people refer to 'solar' they are referring to 'solar panels', but there are other ways to skin that cat.
yesss......
http://gizmodo.com/362271/280+megawatt-solar-boiler-uses-magnifying+glass-bug+killer-technique
The article you linked to said the plant would be running by 2011. Their website still talks of what it will be when it is completed. I do see that the DOE lent them $1.45 billion back in 2010.
The only plant of that type by that company that I found with costs listed is 11 MW at ~$46 million; ~$4 per watt. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PS10_Solar_Power_Plant
It would be nice if there were better comparisons of cost to install, cost to operate, and life cycle costs, life expectancy for the different technologies.
This is just too much common sense for most to grasp so you can opt out anytime. I do not understand why after you build a nuclear plant you build most of a sarcophagus around it so in case of failure it could be capped immediately. If we can roll around Mars taking pictures and kicking rocks we should be able to make ourselves safe from radiation.
Personally though, I do not see nuclear winning out until every last penny can be gotten out of the last drop of oil.
I'm all for nuke power, but it is worth mentioning that all it does is replace one fuel source with another.
I have no idea what the total required terawattage required for the planet is, but if you wanted to switch it all over to uranium reactors and it turns out we only have enough uranium to produce 10% of the global requirement, you haven't "fixed" anything at all.
I'm of the opinion that we need to stop pretending power consumption is "growth." It's not. You can burn 20 KWHs heating your house with electric spaceheaters for a day, but that's not advancing or "growing" the economy in any way.
The NUCLEAR Energy option can certainly end ALL of our energy concerns if somebody for some reason pushes the Nuke 'em button. The only oil available will be that which naturally seeps out of the ground, if you can find such rare spots....
People die, that is very a common phenomenon you know. Now you can die from invisible indirect cause due to global warning creating droughts and endangering food supplies, or could go die from years of accumulation of Mercury from burning Coal, or from being killed in a war that is about oil supplies control as a soldier,or from respiratory problems or from carbon monoxide. But the glowing stuff of radiation sells a lot more newspapers, the cause and effect is much easier to understand so it ~kills more~, that is a cognitive bias of availability..... One should do a proper accounting, just the soldier killed in Irak war I and Irak war II on the US side would dwarf any casualty from nuclear civilian use, now add the Iraqi civilian death and your wife glowing green story is just good for Homer Simpson material but has no place in an intelligent debate.
Feel free to move to Pripyat. The problems are far greater than just immediate deaths. From Chernobyl, there was a loss of nearly 2 million acres of farmland and nearly 2 million acres of forest for many years. If you increase the amount of power produced by nuclear reactors 20-fold, I suspect the risks will increase proportionally.
LNG tankers are floating bombs? Then why doesn't the US Coast Guard have it on the top ten most dangerous cargos?
The best way to export natural gas is probably fertilizers...
That is a very good comment..... and one of the reasons I have recommended positions in TNH.....
Oil prices will go up forever for two reasons:
1) Quantitative limits. We can't find and produce as much in the future as we have in the past.
2) Declining energy return. We're not mining oil; we're mining energy. Today's oil yields 80 percent less energy than the oil of 50 years ago. Proportionally, we have to extract more oil to get the same energy that would have taken less oil and cheaper oil, 50 years ago.
So, we have less oil, what we've got isn't as good, and it takes more effort, energy and money to get it, boosting prices. While prices will flucuate with the economy and black swan incidents like war with Iran, the upward trend willl be ever higher, until the interdependent just-in-time supply chains that supply the world's industries are no longer viable and effect even the process of petroleum extraction - at which point we're done with oil as a significant energy resource.
Nuclear plus better battery technology really is the only viable option if we want to maintain civilization at something resembling the current level beyond the next 30 years.
3) relentless greed by the oil baronesses
A good thing with time: it keeps passing by.
So, most incidents on nuclear plant sites shall be blamed on antiquated design. It cant be otherwise.
'Americanism' is only 236 years old, has been prevailing in the world for less.
Nuclear waste is generally categorized as:
-short term, under 300 years
-long term, over 1,000 years.
In only 236 years of existence, 'Americanism' has put the world in a state as never before, running toward depletion of resources.
And people want to believe that after a new 300 years of 'americanism' running, short term, let alone long term, nuclear waste wont grow a major burden on humanity due to 'American' economics?
The end goal as wished by 'Americans' is known: coercing some low sub human, or non human beings to yield their resources in order to be bestowed upon the high priviledge of swimming among nuclear waste poured on them by 'Americans'
US world order.
Anyone who drives a car has a fridge uses a light bulb watches telly USES A COMPUTER eats food grown globally has a crappy plastic toy from wallmart etc etc etc is to blame not just one nation. But you know that.
So now that you've identified what you think the problem is, what do you think we should do?
<crickets>
Clearly, AnAnonymous is a proponent of an anti-consumerist, anarcho-primitivist world, such as that sought by Tyler Durden (the Fight Club Character). Once we can go back to hunting deer with dogs and spears in deserted city streets, everything will be fine.
MD: Infant deaths also up in B.C., Canada after Fukushima — Corroborates U.S. study (VIDEO) Published: December 22nd, 2011 at 1:04 pm ET
"Title: Peer Reviewed Study Shows 14,000 U.S. Deaths from Fukushima
Uploaded by: TheBigPictureRT
Upload date: Dec 22, 2011
Description: Dr. Janette Sherman, M.D., Internist and Toxicologist. [...] There’s shocking new evidence out that the Fukushima disaster may have led to the deaths of as many as 14,000 people…in America! For more on this – I’m joined by Dr. Janette Sherman – Internist and Toxicologist – and co-author of a new report on the link between an increase in deaths here in America and the ongoing Fukushima nuclear crisis."
http://enenews.com/md-infant-death-also-increased-in-bc-canada-corrobora...
fucking. utter. garbage.
Casey does not know shit about LNG. I have served aboard LNG carriers for over 15 years. They are not "floating bombs" . They tried to detonate LNG with TNT at China Lake, CA. and could not do it. They are much safer than crude oil tankers.
Doug Casey = rodeo clown
The original paper predicted peak-oil at certain price. If price rises then production will rise accordingly and vice versa. Question now is at current price range ($80~$100) how much oil is available with respect to consumption that "peak-oil" is valid.
Production which is MORE EXPENSIVE becomes appealing as price rises, but the ultimate problem is that production *limits* aren't a function of price. Only as much oil as can be produced can be produced, and it doesn't matter how high the price goes.
You can't grow an oak tree to maturity in 6 months, no matter how much you're willing to spend.
"Peak oil" was already demonstrated twice. Unless the production rate in the future increases beyond the 2006 global max, "peak oil" is TRUE. It's not about word-games or market dynamics.
Doug Casey's opinion on nuclear power just demonstrates the next peak theory: human brain.
There are enough scientific studies out there proving that nuclear power is one of the most expensive form of energy. Also there will be a major nuclear disaster in the world every 10 years. Those studies are of course ignored by the advocates of nuclear power.
To comply with primary energy demand growth, we had to double the number of nuclear reactors every 25 to 30 years, increasing the risk of a nuclear disaster significantly.
A nuclear power operator in the US is liable for only $12 billion in damages. The rest is up to the tax payer. Only for Fukushima we talk about at least 10 times the amount in damages.
And if Thorium is such a great business, why nobody does it?
From the proponents of nuclear power you will hear only lies, lies and lies. They want to make quick profits and foot the full bill on future generations.
Germany does the right thing. They invest heavily in renewables and sustainability.
Germany & Solar Power
"Solar subsidies cost German consumers billions of dollars a year and are widely regarded as inefficient. Even environmentalists are concerned that Berlin's focus on solar comes at the detriment of other renewables. But the solar industry has a powerful lobby, and politicians have proven powerless to resist."
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/german-solar-subsidies-to-remain-high-with-consumers-paying-the-price-a-842595.html
With solarization you pay for the true cost upfront and do not shift it to future generations like with fossil or nuclear. The only way to get to a sustainable civilization is to make ressource usage save but expensive. Efficiency is counterproductive. Look up Jevons' paradox.
Irish oil imports
Jan - June 1998 : 303.5 Million PUNTS
Jan - June 2012 : 2,628 Million EUROS
Dork, did you mean Pounds? Because this difference is huge.
I wonder why he didn't just say that oil was $10 a barrel in 1998.
If nothing else, this should shave a few cents off of production/transport costs
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/georgemonbiot/2012/aug/29/day-worl...
There are 1.48 trillion bbls of proven oil reserves and production (2005 through 2008) averaged daily 85.24 million bbls per day. That means if no new reserves are found the last proven reserve will be gone in 40 years at this rate. That means there are cars being put on the road today that will become sculpture because they have no gasoline, and long before oil is gone it will be too expensive to turn into motor fuels. I am optimistic that improvements in drilling techniques, refining methods, and new deposits will be found that will extend the dates of both the end of oil and the price hikes that will mean essentially the same thing, but at the rate of consumption not by more than about 10-15 years, 20 at most. For example Venezuela has more than double their stated reserves in the form of oil muds in the Orinoco Belt, but to turn it into something useful is not going to happen soon.
So, call it about 30 years till petroleum based energy is no longer viable on a global scale (there will be local pockets of petroleum plenty that are kept local for domestic use long after international pricing has rendered the oil industry untenably priced), that is not a lot of time people, I was 24 thirty years ago and those years have flown like a scalded goose.
So, hop to it, we need energy and technology solutions and fast, preferably ones that avoid carbon pollution if for no other reason than to shut the greenies the fuck up, we can build on those and improve their efficiency and cost structure as we go, but we have to get started now. And it will not be easy since electrical propulsion will never be viable for vehicles until they can cheaply manufacture a room temperature superconductor, and conservation while it has a future in some respects just is not going to work if you try to apply it to public transportation, dirty public vehicles with crap schedules that do not go anywhere you need to go when you need to get there, filled with dirty people, crazy people, germs, I had to ride the bus a couple of times in NYC and the urine stench alone burned my eyes. No thank you.
cheaply manufacture a room temperature superconductor
ever wonder why gold has been valued so highly by so many civilizations across such a vast amount of time?
a potential reason why (albeit hidden from the mass conscious):
http://www.gold-eagle.com/editorials_05/srobbins011806.html
What we need is some quantum leap in technology that can produce enormous amounts of energy efficiently, or some different method of propulsion that can power vehicles of all sorts. I am not a scientist, so I don't know what that could be, but there has to be someone on this planet that does, otherwise we are doomed to fights to the death for a few gallons of fuel.
Animals can convert solar energy trapped by plants into kinetic energy. We could always just go back to powering cars with oxen again. Might have to adjust how we lay out living space a bit, but that might be easier than getting something for nothing.
Yes, but you can't feed this population using Oxen.
Which population is "this"?
At the end of the day, I'm more concerned with the USians than the Haitians.
I was referring to the world's population - but you'd have a hard time feeding the US population with animal labor at this point too.
The technology exists today and has been supressed by the banksters, oil barons, and their lackeys in government for years. Get rid of the , the currently monetary/market system and federal government in general, and we'll be living in Star Trek times very quickly.
I am a scientist (physicist).... closest 'quantum leap in technology' I've heard of is LENR (Low Energy Nuclear Reactions). Used to be called 'cold fusion', but this was massively discredited in the west in '89 but is now being looked at again.
Might be a big fat zero, but maybe not. Mitsubishi, US Navy, and other independents seem to like it.
Nuclear reactors don't churn out chemicals, plastics, rubber, fertilizer, pharmaceuticals, and thousands of other products and petroleum derivatives... oil refineries do, and worldwide production of oil has been going downhill for years and WILL NEVER increase while it's shackled to the current monetary/market system. For the ultimate link on peak oil look here... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Z9WVZddH9w&feature=player_detailpage#t=8...
A parting comment....
http://www.energyandcapital.com/articles/peak-oil-isnt-real/2508
as others have said, kindly explain the data presented here:
http://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=pet&s=mcrfpak2&f=m
It looks like they drilled a bunch of wells and then the wells slowly ran out of pressure over time. What is your point?
If you mean the ups and downs on the downward trend, looks like some kind of seasonal thing.
Me thinks that you missed the sarc flag.....
". . . we can run cars and trucks and tractors on reserve numbers."
Priceless.
is that you Simon Black?
Doug, regarding the statement about nuclear "the safest, cheapest, and cleanest form of mass power generation" what a bunch of bullshit. Nuclear is the most expensive energy source their is if you include the cost of storing the nuclear waste safely for 10,000 years (if that is even possible). Are you one of the baby boomers who feels it is okay to push the costs of your environmental mess onto future generations? Asshole.