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Oil prices and possible solutions
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 Re: Oil prices and possible solutions
Posted by Orpheus on Thu Mar 17th at 10:18pm 2005

Now its been a while since we had a good debate. Its been even longer since we had one that didn't involve religion, the war or gay rights. Its been forever since we had one that I could have an educated comment about. Perhaps I will grow smart enough to participate with educated replies in the next one, but for now lets discuss petroleum and see how it goes.

Now i suppose most of you have heard something at least about the new proposed plans to drill in the fare reaches of northeastern Alaska. Now mind, I have no issues at all with the idea of drilling where ever and whenever its needed, as long as all possible precautions are instilled prior to prevent any spillage. What I do have problems with is the idea of drilling to "relieve" the gas prices. Thats about the most preposterous concept known. There is one thing thats fact when it comes to fuel prices. Price goes up fast, and drops slow. I have seen it go up 10 cents in one day and go down 1 cent over a matter of weeks.

This idea of drilling, it sounds like yet another ploy to increase the currency flow into the oil owners pockets, not a solution to the prices. First of all, it would take at least 2 years to see the first drop of crude to reach the market. Secondly, it would never reach it in sufficient quantities to influence prices.

The debate I wanna have is this. If you had the power, what would you do to effect change in this worlds use of fossil fuels? Also feel free to discuss any derivative created from fossil fuels.

I will allow this to run a bit before I reply. Since my job is 100% reliant on the cost of fuels, I am a bit biased, and frustrated so over the costs and do not want to direct the path this topic goes.

[addsig]



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 Re: Oil prices and possible solutions
Posted by Leperous on Thu Mar 17th at 11:38pm 2005

I'm not sure why oil has been going up in price so much recently, but what I do know is that any attempt to create cleaner, cheaper energy, that's isn't carried out by the energy companies, will be fought very strongly, simply because of money and jobs and power (which is actually absurd, as you can do much more interesting and useful things with petroleum than just burning it!).

But who knows, someone might come up with a clever way to make petrol, and we are inevitably sliding towards other power sources. At the end of the day though we want fusion and (satellite) solar power, and these are the two I'd work towards given the power.





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 Re: Oil prices and possible solutions
Posted by Orpheus on Thu Mar 17th at 11:53pm 2005

A friend/co-worker of mine works in sales at a big name fuel supplier here in Arkansas. according to her, and of course her husband whom works in the fuel stock, fuel went up this last time because (according to him) china recently entered the market for fuel. as such, they seem to be stockpiling it for future uses.

according to him, its the old "price and demand" engine at work driving it up currently.

for my part, i feel conservation will gain us the most in the short term. what we really need is alternatives to fossil fuels. but to change the whole economy, from the bottom to the top would be an endeavor that would put the space program to shame in complexity.

new mechanics, new assembly, new storage (for the fuel), new everything.

increasing exports of barrels of crude is not an option. consider, even if we have plenty left, petrol is a finite resource. It is not replenish able as such, we most definitely have less today, than before today.

More input guys. no one has yet touched the subject i really wanna discuss. i am curious to see whom touches it first.

[addsig]



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 Re: Oil prices and possible solutions
Posted by Gwil on Fri Mar 18th at 12:47am 2005

China entered years ago, moreso they increased demand (along with steel) in the past 5 or so years.

Oil prices have risen with economy and successive American incursions into oil territory, hostile or otherwise. The only real solution is to invest in hydrogen tech (or other) to sort it out, and stop starting wars based on vendettas and economy. Particularly when they don't target the troublesome nation for the "invasion reasons".

Oil is running out, fast. Time to look elsewhere. Sadly, as with all other capitalist endeavours, the short term solution is profit and not investment with a view to larger profit.
[addsig]



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 Re: Oil prices and possible solutions
Posted by Nickelplate on Fri Mar 18th at 2:39am 2005

Here is what I would do if i had the power, I would make distribute stock in all oil companies to all world citizens. the chairmen would be elected by all the citizens and and it would be like a worldwide public office. We could all call to vote on who got kicked out when they got greedy. Not only that but there would be term limits and an unbreakable code of rules that would threaten any offenders to be steamrolled slowly from the feet up. then splashed with crude oil for good measure... If everyday ppl had more control over the oil companies, they would not get so damn greedy!!!!!!

[edit] Oh yeah, and f**k China...

[addsig]



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 Re: Oil prices and possible solutions
Posted by omegaslayer on Fri Mar 18th at 3:01am 2005

The reason why oil prices have gone up: its starts with a "B" and rhymes with "push"
[addsig]



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 Re: Oil prices and possible solutions
Posted by Orpheus on Fri Mar 18th at 3:04am 2005

? quoting omegaslayer
The reason why oil prices have gone up: its starts with a "B" and rhymes with "push"

i figured you'd say "tush" since we all are taking it up the arse.

[addsig]



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 Re: Oil prices and possible solutions
Posted by Fjorn on Fri Mar 18th at 10:04am 2005

Bush is just the start

The world is running outta oil

The oil wars have begun
[addsig]



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 Re: Oil prices and possible solutions
Posted by Crono on Fri Mar 18th at 10:18am 2005

Bio-Diesel or Fuel Cells are excellent alternatives because they're as efficient or more efficient to what we use now (comparing Fuel Cells to unleaded, not diesel, which, I hear, is more efficient and cleaner burning). Neither have any harmful byproducts (as far as I know). And Bio-Diesel would cure two a few things, actually: cleaner air (at least a large percentage of car emissions), cleaner water (since it runs on common oil, like used vegetable oil.), less sewer maintenance (there was some estimate that 60% of sewer and pipe repair is because of grease being dumped down the drain).

Now, obviously, if you're speaking of cleaner resources for the same of the environment, it'd be best to start at power generators and work down to cars and home equipment. Since, as most people are oblivious to, using a crap load of electricity, causing your fair share of generator fueling, is worse then joy riding in your car.

Again, these aren't hard facts, rather things I've read and heard, not sure if they're 100% accurate.

However, fuel cells will never work because ?the market wont allow it?. Since, I doubt any cooperation would be the sole supplier of water. It's really sad too, because there are companies investing in fuel cells, but they're not going off of water, they're using things like methanol as a base. I imagine to keep fueling stations intact. [addsig]



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 Re: Oil prices and possible solutions
Posted by Leperous on Fri Mar 18th at 11:32am 2005

Well, they're not really excellent alternatives if you think about it- where do we get this bio-diesel or methane or hydrogen from? The former will have to be grown in vast fields, which would involve eejits cutting down more rainforest and converting a lot of arable food-producing land; and the latter will have to be extracted from something first, which involves energy, and at the end of the day you'll lose energy in the process (though probably not much), not to mention there may be problems with us pumping too much water into the atmosphere. Again, the way forwards is solar power and fusion, along with very efficient batteries to go with (or hydrogen cells I suppose, if you're not using fossil fuels to generate it!)

But what would I do to effect such a change? I don't think there's much you can do except increase research into the technologies involved and wait for some breakthroughs that mean such technologies are cheaper, better and easier than petrol. Anything that would negate the need for refuelling stations would be pretty kick-ass, too.





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 Re: Oil prices and possible solutions
Posted by wil5on on Fri Mar 18th at 11:45am 2005

An interesting thing to consider is that hydrogen does indirectly cause emissions. Currently we dont get H2 from seawater, its made as a byproduct of a chemical process used in the manufacture of... something... anyway, the hydrogen that would be used to power any H2 vehicles today would come from those plants.

There are hydrogen buses in Perth I beleive, and I think they might be introduced in other cities within a few years.

[addsig]



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 Re: Oil prices and possible solutions
Posted by thursday- on Fri Mar 18th at 1:00pm 2005

http://www.flexbeta.net/forums/lofiversion/index.php/t5468.html has some interesting theory of creating energy from the moon, to quote the post:

A potential gas source found on the moon?s surface could hold the key to meeting future energy demands as the earth?s fossil fuels dry up in the coming decades, scientists said on Friday.

Mineral samples from the moon contained abundant quantities of Helium 3, a variant of the gas used in lasers and refrigerators as well as to blow up balloons.

?When compared to the earth, the moon has a tremendous amount of Helium 3,? said Lawrence Taylor, a director of the US Planetary Geosciences Institute, Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences. ?When Helium 3 combines with deuterium (an isotope of hydrogen), the fusion proceeds at a very high temperature and it can produce awesome amounts of energy,? Taylor said.

?Just 25 tonnes of helium, which can be transported on a space shuttle, is enough to provide electricity for the US for one year,? said Taylor, who is in Udaipur to attend a global conference on moon exploration.

Helium 3 is deposited on the lunar surface by solar winds and would have to be extracted from moon soil and rocks. Some 200 million tonnes of lunar soil would produce one tonne of helium, only 10 kilos of helium are available on earth. [addsig]



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 Re: Oil prices and possible solutions
Posted by Orpheus on Fri Mar 18th at 1:18pm 2005

To exchange one engine that burns fuel, for another is a step in the right direction, but ultimately a dead-end path. we need alternatives that do not create exhaust in any stage of its use. IE, people think electricity is clean, but coal plants are messy electric generators.

in the short term, we need conservation. scrap ALL the SUV's. enforcing carpooling is not an option really because there are just to many jobs like mine. i drive 55,000 miles in my car, by myself each year. how would that work???

even at our current level of tech, we have plenty of engines capable of 30+ miles per gallon. and thats the ones we see on the roadways. we have tech on shelves that can give upward of 150 miles per gallon. this needs to be brought out and used.

in the 50's,60's and 70's we had cars that weighed 3,600 pounds with an engine that delivered 165 horse power and could do 100 miles per hour at 20 miles per gallon. now we have cars that weigh 2,000 pounds with engines that deliver 300 horses and 20 miles per gallon. some would argue that is improvement, i differ. i see waste. 300 horses is doing 1/2 the work, it should get twice the mileage.

currently we have auto's (namely the SUV that get less than 15 miles per gallon. it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that those babies are inefficient. it doesn't take an accountant to figure out that price and demand says "the SUV is driving up the prices"

the sad thing is, from a mechanical standpoint, i cannot determine why they do so poorly. their engines are perfectly capable of getting the fuel efficiency necessary. *shrugs*

on the long term, we need new, on the short term we need what we have NOW to work better.





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 Re: Oil prices and possible solutions
Posted by Andrei on Fri Mar 18th at 1:43pm 2005

Solar energy and batteries are the key. Metal ore is beginning to run-out aswell. What are we going to do THEN? Start stealing railway tracks and sewer grates to sell them to recycling plants (the way they do here)?
[addsig]



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 Re: Oil prices and possible solutions
Posted by fraggard on Fri Mar 18th at 1:55pm 2005

? quote:

even at our current level of tech, we have plenty of engines capable of 30+ miles per gallon. and thats the ones we see on the roadways. we have tech on shelves that can give upward of 150 miles per gallon. this needs to be brought out and used.

in the 50's,60's and 70's we had cars that weighed 3,600 pounds with an engine that delivered 165 horse power and could do 100 miles per hour at 20 miles per gallon. now we have cars that weigh 2,000 pounds with engines that deliver 300 horses and 20 miles per gallon. some would argue that is improvement, i differ. i see waste. 300 horses is doing 1/2 the work, it should get twice the mileage.



I think this is where everyone will soon be heading. In the near future, increasing efficiency will be the key to managing fuel costs. Already, most countries in the world seem to have more efficient vehicles than the USA. Here we have commuter cars that give 28-30 miles per US Gallon and commuter two-wheelers that give 141-150 mpg, going up to 210 mpg (yes). This is because really high fuel prices have forced our auto manufacturers to put out more efficient vehicles.

Plus, I don't see electric vehicles, hybrid engines, hydrogen motors etc taking off very soon. Even though there are no real technical reasons prohibiting them, the oil companies have too much control on what happens in the (automotive) world, and they are not going to let control slide out their grasp that easy. Until someone can come up with a technology that can be used to make money, of the cold-hard kind, no one will switch over.




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 Re: Oil prices and possible solutions
Posted by Leperous on Fri Mar 18th at 2:16pm 2005

Mining helium-3 of course would not be cheap at all- perhaps it would be a better idea to collect it directly from solar winds?

/envisages giant space-based collectors 1000's of km across

At the end of the day, tritium gives more energy (it decomposes into helium-3 anyway via very low energy radiation, that is easily shielded). The problem is that it's harder to use :/





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 Re: Oil prices and possible solutions
Posted by Crono on Fri Mar 18th at 10:58pm 2005

Bio-Desiel (this conversion currently costs a few thousand ... and you have to do it yourself):

You can use used fat and oil. As in Vegitable Oil. (makes your car smell like french fries)

Hydorgen Fuel Cells (this requires the vehicle to be remodled, to fit in enough cells to be as effecient as current vehicles):

You can have a powerful energy source (battery, solar power, whatever) in the vehicle which starts the evaporation process. The fuel cell its self absorbs the hydrogen and the rest is byproduct (water vapor).

Both would eliminate fueling stations as far as I can see.
Either fusion, or solar power could be used as well. They're all valid alternatives.

I think the point is, there are MANY alternatives to petrol right now, they would just cost a little much to kick start.
And I mentioned methonol because that's the only type of base liquid motor companies are looking into (they can't make money if your car runs on water, for instance, they need something to sell you on a long term basis)

And I don't want to hear any bitching about he fuel cell aspect, they do work, and the exact type of car I'm talking about has been built and tested at MIT over several years.

I believe there was also a guy who did a bio-desiel conversion to his pickup, with several gallon drums full of oil in the bed, and was able to drive cross country (USA) without filling up. (roughly 3000 miles)

Not really much any of us could do about this though. There are more powerful contracts by nations for oil in works. Not to mention just replacing the petrol stations (use of petrol) would cost more money then drilling a new part of the world. [addsig]



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 Re: Oil prices and possible solutions
Posted by Cash Car Star on Sat Mar 19th at 7:17pm 2005

Believing Bush to be the cause of rising oil prices is just blind ignorance mixed with unperturbable bias. His actions may have caused a small immediate rise in price, but the fact is prices are going up regardless. As we suck the world dry of oil, the places that are cheap to extract from go first. All the really easy spots (besides a few locations in Africa so politically unstable that the Mideast is made to look like Peter Piper's Pepper Picking Fields) have been used up so the price of extraction is constantly on the rise. Eventually, more difficult locations like Alaska will become cheaper and cheaper in comparison and will eventually be tapped.

The problem with misguided officials is not their declarations of war, in this regard, but rather whether they even see this as a problem. Many bank on technological innovation as a determined linear line and believe a smooth transition is all but in the history books. While there is truth to the precept that technological innovation is often a result of pressing needs, it is ludicrous to believe that there is no negative economic impact of such a changeover. Look at the food shortages that occured when the farm system was overhauled into being much more machine reliant. There will be energy shortages, and severe, if the problem is ignored and left to sort itself. And yet, this is what many high ranking economists are doing.

Even more bizarre are the ones that completely turn the model for price prediction of an unrenewable resource on its head. Since rising prices will allow for more money spent on exploration and extraction, theoretically there is always more oil we aren't extracting yet because it is too costly, but will eventually be profitable. However, this is an infinite sum, and infinite sums can have finite values. To use the price prediction model as proof that we have unlimited oil is ridiculous, and yet it has been done.

As to the argument on the land required to grow our fuel should we switch to a vegetable oil based system, I unfortunately am unaware of the numbers involved, but I can say that there is a significant portion of land in the US where farmers are paid to not grow crops. This is a farmer relief program meant to support farmers by keeping the prices from dropping incredibly by not oversupplying the market. If these lands were converted to some other use, say growing vegetable oil for fuel, then the supply of wheat and corn and other such commodities to the market would be unchanged. Is there enough of this land to support our energy needs? I have no idea. But if it is, I believe the economic repurcussions of using this land would be almost entirely beneficial.





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 Re: Oil prices and possible solutions
Posted by Orpheus on Sat Mar 19th at 10:53pm 2005

? quoting Cash Car Star
but I can say that there is a significant portion of land in the US where farmers are paid to not grow crops. This is a farmer relief program meant to support farmers by keeping the prices from dropping incredibly by not oversupplying the market. If these lands were converted to some other use, say growing vegetable oil for fuel, then the supply of wheat and corn and other such commodities to the market would be unchanged. Is there enough of this land to support our energy needs? I have no idea. But if it is, I believe the economic repurcussions of using this land would be almost entirely beneficial.

I have tried repeatedly to explain this to some people i know and it just eludes them. they won't accept the fact that you are growing the crops for an entirely different goal.

without actually being a farmer, i have no real convincing grounds to base my opinions on either so, i always lose the discussion.

there are most definitely two distinct camps however. those that believe that crop based fuel is the solution, and those that believe that any extra grains grown will destroy the system and drive prices down.

[addsig]



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 Re: Oil prices and possible solutions
Posted by Leperous on Sat Mar 19th at 11:41pm 2005

? quoting Cash Car Star
While there is truth to the precept that technological innovation is often a result of pressing needs, it is ludicrous to believe that there is no negative economic impact of such a changeover. Look at the food shortages that occured when the farm system was overhauled into being much more machine reliant. There will be energy shortages, and severe, if the problem is ignored and left to sort itself. And yet, this is what many high ranking economists are doing.

Do you think this holds true for energy production though, especially when much more becomes available? Nuclear and renewable power, though not the biggest things in the world, haven't dented any economies; petrol cars were a gradual change over around 20/30/40 years from horse power, rather than a quick explosion and would have provided thousands of new manufacturing jobs; the steam engine and coal mining revolutionised industry and lead to unprecedented growth!

Anyway, why bother with acres of plants, when you can place (potentially) more efficient and cost-effective solar panels? Doing so would replace traditional farming jobs with fewer high-technology ones, but I'm sure those many billions of dollars of subsidies I suspect you pay that are saved can go into useful related schemes...






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