Safe Speed Forums

Did you read the comment made by the chairman of BP a couple of days ago? He's of the opinion that recent rapid developments in extraction technology will return large number of these moribund wells to profitable production - and he was basing that profitability on a fall in price to $30 - $40 per barrel over the next 5 years caused by it... I hope he's right!

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"Politicians are the same the world over... We build bridges where there aren't any rivers." - Nikita Kruschev

off topic, but these would be the yanks where the government spends twice as much per capita as the Uk.

I have no doubt that this is correct, However, I would be interested in knowing what the "Energy Ratio" for these advanced process are (Past sugestions for advanced extraction include use of detergents/solvants, Steam, Electrical heating (!) and even setting underground fires!)

Note, I am not saying at any point that Oil is going to become "Unavailable" any time soon, simply that it will cease to be an energy "Source" and that to extract the remaining opil reserves will require a substantial energy input in the form of, (say), Nuclear derived heat or electricity!

This does not nececarrily mean that Oil fuels willl become massivly expensive either. But it *does* mean that we will have to find an alternative "Source" of energy to replace that which we currently get from oil (and gas). To give you an idea as to what this is going to mean, For the UK it would take arround 200 Sizewell B's to replace the energy we currently get from fossil fuels! PLEASE dont try to tell me this is going to all come from a scattering of remotely sited wind farms!

The big problem is that we really must "Plan ahead" for this and not wait for the shortages before we take action otherwise things are going to get really very hard (Remember the drop in oil production that triggererd the "Oil Crisis" of the early 70's was really quite small! and was political, and therefore sudden. I imagine that the "Crisis" in the future will be similar in nature and simmilarly disruptive! w
We really should be building our alternatives now while it is easy)

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"The road to a police state is paved with public safety legislation"

And cheaper, before the government become even more inefficient with their finances.

I'm sorry, I don't know. I read his comments in the financial press, not the technical. But one must assume that the ratio is going to be fairly exciting as he's predicting a resulting substantial fall in oil prices.



I have no specialist knowledge about power generation (other than using a wind generator on my boat!) but from a purely common-sense point of view I'd assume that future electricity supplies should be targeted to come from a range of methods. The problem appears to me to be a little like the "global warming" debate in that the advocates of each of the available approaches appear to treat them as if they are Holy Writ and any comment or discussion not totally in line with their "church" is treated as Heresy!!

Needs a bit (a lot) of joined-up thinking I'd reckon.

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"Politicians are the same the world over... We build bridges where there aren't any rivers." - Nikita Kruschev

I'm sorry, I don't know. I read his comments in the financial press, not the technical. But one must assume that the ratio is going to be fairly exciting as he's predicting a resulting substantial fall in oil prices.

Look, as long as Coal (Say) is relativly abundant, It may well be "Economically" worthwhile to burn 2GJ of Coal to produce 1GJ of oil(IE Buisnesses can make profit from it, AND as a buisnessman myself, I have no problem with profit!) because oil is, in many ways, a damn sight more useful than Coal (Ever tryed to run an airplane on Coal??) But PLEASE dont confuse this with Oil still being an "Energy Source"!

Back in the 30's Oil prospecters could reasonably expect to get an energy ratio better than 50:1 (IE you could extract 50 "Units" of oil for each "Unit" expended). Nowadays you are lucky to get 10:1 and the newer "Extreem" fields (You know, drilling through moving ice off alaska! That sort of thing) it can be much pooer.

As I said earlier, Alternative/extream Oil is still useful, but we are going to have to massivly ramp up our non-oil energy supplies in order to be able to exploit it!

As for "Renewables", I do not have a problem with exploiting renewables. At the end of the day, Each KWhr generated using a windmill or a solar panerl is a KWhr's less Urainium/Thorium consumed (And a KWhr's less waste generated) but renewables are going (In the UK anyway) to be the icing rather than the cake! The cake has to be Yellow!

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"The road to a police state is paved with public safety legislation"

Yeah, and as Robert Newman said on his show, we might as well do it
now, while the lights are still on and we can see what we are doing. What
line of business are you in, Dusty? You seem to know a fair amount about
the way things work.

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I stole this .sig

A little off topic but I thought this was interesting.



I looked on ebay for the most cost efficient solar panel and compared the useful energy costs against juice from the grid to give an idea of relative effort needed to produce energy.

The best panel I could find is 165Wmax for £470 incl P&P, giving 351mW per pound. The useful lifetime of these panels are generally around 10 years use before power output significantly degrades.

Dismissing the attenuating effects from our miserable English weather:
at 6 useful hours per day (that’s the best achievable when installed on a fixed surface – assuming the panel is perpendicular to the sun at noon – in a desert) -

165W over 10 years is 165/1000*6*365*10 = 3613kwh.

At 9 pence per kwh, that would equate to £325 from the UK national grid.

Assuming comparable profits, the cost of manufacturing and shipping the panel is greater than piping the juice directly. To me this would indicate there’s no net energy advantage of electrical solar power.

I actually have hopes for photovoltaics, though my vision is slightly diferent from the one promoted in the popular press.

However, they do need to be an order of magnitude cheaper at the consumer end to fulfill the promise.

On another note, I came accross (An unconfirmed, and surprising I really thought the figure would have been bigger than this!) stat the other day.

It gives a hint at the scale of the problem that faces us

The "Total" PV production between 1982 and 1998 amounts to about 3Km^2!

To put this in perspective, to displace US fossil fuel requirements using PV would require an area of PV of 220,000Km^2!!

This is not going to happen any time soon methinks!

Back to the (Nuclear) drawing board!

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"The road to a police state is paved with public safety legislation"

Lots of sensible comments here, I think. The oil isn't going to run out any time soon - and that's 30+ years in the oil industry talking. We may no longer be finding more than we're using but that's a whole different kettle of hydrocarbons to saying it's running out. Media and Government love to keep the scares going...........the Media have no accountability and are totally hypocritical. They bemoan drivers of "gas-guzzling" 4x4's but don't bat an eyelid when Wayne Rooney, or whoever, is flown home from Germany, and returned, in a private jet for an X-Ray on his foot.........don't they have X-Ray machines in Germany ? Government, (ours at least), use lies, half-truths and scare tactics to control us potentially unruly oiks.

However, we should be using all our non-renewable resources as sparingly as possible.

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"Experience isn't everything - but it's most of it".

Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you.