Re: Is Saudi Arabia Running Out of Oil?

From: william mook (william.mook_at_mokindustries.com)
Date: 09/06/04 

Date: 6 Sep 2004 11:58:45 -0700

quasarstrider@yahoo.com.br (quasarstrider) wrote in message news:<14a48ff9.0409060630.7b81dbda@posting.google.com>...
> william.mook@mokindustries.com (william mook) wrote in message news:<407c5321.0409051805.795f5376@posting.google.com>...
> > That's easy to say, but harder to do. Petroleum products contribute
> > significantly to our standard of living. Not only with respect to the
> > benefits of low cost energy, but also with respect to low cost
> > fertilizers, insecticides, plastics, fabrics, you name it. If we had
>
> Fertilizers require cheap hydrogen, not hydrocarbons. See:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haber_process
>

???? This reference described the Haber process. The input that
energizes this process is methane derived from natural gas which is a
fossil fuel which I count as a hydrocarbon product along with crude
oil.

So, I would suggest you actually read the references you site.

> About plastics and similar things like some fabrics, yes you do need
> hydrocarbons AFAIK. Regarding some insecticides and medicine, yes some
> do need hydrocarbons, like benzene, to manufacture. However, using the
> wonders of genetic engineering, you could probably convert most medicine
> and insecticide (toxin) requirements to production via bacterial farms.
> For e.g. several bacteria produce toxins which could be harvested.

The harvesting of bacteria doesn't change my central point which is
the cost of doing all things today rest upon the price points we have
achieved for fossil fuels. Take those away, reduce them, or increase
their prices, and the whole industrial paradigm changes. What is easy
and cheap today is not likely to be easy and cheap in the absence of
hydrocarbon fuels like crude oil and natural gas.

> > to go back to wood we'd return to the living standards of the 19th
> > century. The rub of that is the technology of the 19th century
>
> Not quite. Lack of oil wouldn't uninvent computer and airplane technology.

No, it would just make operating them very expensive propositions,
which is my point. You won't uninvent airplanes for example, but if
it cost 100x more to operate them due to fuel price increases they
would be removed from the market as important economic factors.
Computers are little more difficult to assess. Directly operating them
in an environment of high super-high fuel prices wouldn't be an issue.
What would be an issue is their cost of manufacture. Look at the
names of the nations stamped across the ICs in your laptop. Parts
come from all over the world. If long distance travel is largely
removed from human experience then these little parts become
unavailable or very costly. If they're unavailable, parts will be made
here. But factories take energy to run, so the parts will be
expensive. And local labor will also be more expensive. That's why
the parts are arriving from Taiwan, Indonesia, Korea, China, Costa
Rica, etc., in the first place. Low labor costs. With far higher
transport costs and manufacturing costs labor won't be such an issue,
and so local labor is likely to be used more. But the point is, in
any case, costs will be far higher as a result. Higher costs,
combined with less disposable income (higher food prices remember
because of higher fertilizer costs and higher costs to operate
tractors and so forth) mean fewer computers get built and sold, which
tends to remove them from being an important part of human experience.

You fail to consider the difference between a world where computers
and airplanes are common and a world where computers and airplanes
exist, but are rarely seen or used. The cost of energy makes the
difference.

> You might have to do alternate designs, using alternate materials, but basic
> knowledge would still hold.

You are making a false argument. I was talking about the cost of
hydrocarbons. You are attempting to argue around knowledge. Knowledge
exists certainly, but that knowledge changes in value based on the
cost of energy, or any strategic resource.
  
> > probably cannot support more than 10% of the people alive today using
> > all the surface of the Earth. Reduced food output, increased use of
> > natural fibers, and so forth, account for much of this change - all
> > things directly related to low-cost petroleum products.
> >
> > So, its easy to say you can go back to coal or wood fired steam
> > boilers - its far more costly than you realize. The boilers
> > themselves are made of steel. The steel requires carbon sources to be
> > made. The steel requires energy itself to be extracted and reduced.
>
> Coal has carbon.

Yes it does. When combined with low-cost hydrogen you can make
low-cost hydrocarbons. This is a viable alternative to extracted
hydro-carbons. Absolutely.

But, again, you're making a false argument. I was considering the
effects of removing hydrocarbons from our economy and the results of
that. Any massive use of coal requires the addition of hydrogen to
make it into usable hydrocarbons. This hydrogen can be added by
Fischer-Tropsch and similar processes of partial oxidation. But,if we
rely on coal alone we'll dramatically increase our CO2 emissions and
quickly burn through the coal we have.

I propose doing something different, but again - this isn't the point
of my earlier post, so your commentary opposing it misses the mark.
That different thing is to cheaply produce hydrogen from sunlight and
water and use coal with renewable sources of hydrogen to make
hydrocarbon fuels where 2/3 of the energy in the fuel comes from
sunlight. That way there are no emissions during hydrocarbon
manufacture (except oxygen) and we build up capacity to make hydrogen
on a massive scale, which will ultimately be used directly.

> Regarding energy for production, plants most often than
> not use electricity to power their machinery. Electricity is not
> significantly produced from petroleum.

Coal is an important but not dominant source of energy in the US. Oil
and natural gas is an important but not dominant source of fossil fuel
energy.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/solar.renewables/page/rea_data/table5.html
http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/ipp/html1/t4p01.html

According to the department of energy in 2000 there were 812 GW of
total generating capacity in the US, of this 500 GW were fossil fuel
powered. Of those 360 GW is coal fired. That's less than half,
around 44% of the total. Hydrocarbons (oil and natural gas) constitute
around 160 GW - nearly a third or 30% of the total produced by fossil
fuels - nearly half or 44% of the amount of capacity available from
coal alone.

Most importantly is the character of what's being built and what's
being retired - so for 2000 we had a total added capacity of 9 GW of
which nearly 8 GW was natural gas, very little was coal.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/ipp/html1/t2p01.html

So, as far as future construction is concerned, people are building
generator capacity that has very little emissions - which doesn't
include coal.

> > Increase the cost of energy and the cost of everything increases.
> >
> > In face of these spiraling costs output of foods, drugs, fabrics, you
> > name it is seriously constricted. Already a significant number of
> > people are living on the edge throughout the world. This will throw
> > 2/3 of the world's population over the edge - into mass starvation.
>
> I don't think so.

Well, increasing costs for primary energy haven't happened as a
routine thing for the modern industrial world. In fact, the modern
world is built on low-cost energy. So, if costs continue to decline,
we can expect continued improvements.

This isn't the issue. The issue I'm discussing, and which you are not
responding to in any meaningful way, is what would life be like if
hydrocarbons were removed from our inventory tomorrow, what would life
be like? The answer is, harder and more costly, and fewer people
would be around at the end of the day.

You've say you don't think so, and don't give any cogent reasoning to
support your view. You have yet to show why you don't think so.

On the other hand I have fully addressed why it is certain that higher
hydrocarbon prices mean huge economic difficulties leading to
starvation. With increased energy prices food won't be grown as
easily or as cheaply or in as great abundance. Products won't get to
market as easily. Supply chains will increase in cost and change
dramatically losing much of their capital efficiency. This means
prices will rise availability will fall, and people on the edge now
will be lost.

This is a reason to keep energy prices low, and bring them lower
still.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/page/fact_sheets/retailprice.html

The department of energy shows that adjusted for inflation, the price
over the past 44 years has suffered one spike. That spike was the
result of the oil crisis of the 1970s. This crisis came about due to
a massive and sudden increase in oil prices. This effect spread
through the economy in the subsequent decade and stabilized at a new
higher price point. Once that price increase was absorbed, prices went
back to their long term trend due to improvements in efficiency.

During the price spike, which is mild by comparision to one we would
have if we had a total lack of hydrocarbons in our economy, many
people suffered around the world.

Here's the data on oil price shocks. They're easily correlated with
the retail price of electricity increases.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/cabs/chron.html

Meanwhile the Center for Disease Control keeps track of famine and
human migration;

http://wonder.cdc.gov/wonder/prevguid/p0000113/p0000113.asp

While no cumulative mortality rate for all of humanity over time is
being kept, we can see from the tables below that the major famines of
the 20th century occurred at the time of major oil price shocks. This
suggests a correlation. Since a mechanism is easily seen as well, it
shows that in the absence of hydrocarbons - the present industrial
infrastructure will be less efficient, more costly, and lead to
millions and more than likely billions of deaths worldwide.

 

> > People will not sit idly by and starve to death. There will be
> > repurcussions. These include, widespread diseases uncontrolled by the
> > medical community since the no longer have the resources to combat
> > diseases, and this will be on the scale of a pandemic. Also,
>
> Actually I think there would be less epidemics rather than more. Lack of
> oil would mean travelling would be more expensive, reducing the spread rate.

The CDC information shows that lack of fresh water and sewage
treatment,which require a functioning industrial infrastructure,lead
to epidemics.

Other CDC information shows that travelling contributes very little to
overall disease rates in the world. That's because migratory birds
keep the world pretty well stocked in diseases from far away places.
It is only travel across pathways that migratory birds don't travel -
like from China to North America - that lead on occasion to flu
outbreaks and similar diseases. While they make news when they happen,
SARS and similar disease won't kill tens of thousands or more as
cholera for example does in Africa.

 
> > widespread political unrest. Marshall law is likely. War even more
> > likely. The use of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons will take
> > their toll.
> >
> > What you say is easy to say. The consequences of going back to wood
> > are huge. After the die off, after the wars, after the pandemics,
> > yes, the survivors may be able to burn wood and use it to live in some
> > sort of post collapse world. But it won't be you and it won't be easy
> > for everyone who passes through the eye of the die-off needle.
> >
> > That's why we need to get to work to expand low-cost synthetic oils as
> > a stop gap measure toward a wealthier happier planet for everyone.
>
> Yes, low-cost synthetic oil (I prefer to call it hydrocarbons) will be
> good for several things. Plastics, airplane fuel, etc.

Yep. On this we agree.