AUSTRALIA’S rural economic forecaster has challenged predictions the world is about to run out of oil, saying it has enough to last at least another 30 years.
ABARE executive director Phillip Glyde told a Senate estimates committee that the peak-oil school of thought, which holds that reserves are near depletion, was wrong.
The Australian: There’s enough oil ‘for at least 30 years’
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
There is no shortage of oil.
There is a shortage of cheap oil. I suspect that for the latter, about 85 million bpd is all that can be managed.
At something over $100 US per barrel, shale oil, tar sand oil, and oil from coal and lignite [cf Latrobe Valley brown coal field] can all be produced very profitably. There is no shortage of any of these raw materials.
The current cost for Albertan tar sand oil is between $US 16 and $US 20 per barrel.
The constraint is that years and many billions of dollars are required, plus governments prepared to face the issue and do something.
This isn’t news in the industry. Every serious petroleum geologist has a chuckle at the mention of peak oil theory, it’s just another Malthusian con.
The cure for high petrol prices is the high price of petrol. It’s a non-paradox that Big Government never gets—it’s all about supply and demand.
The oil is out there, but exploration, patch development and refineries don’t get built if the price-to-earnings ratio don’t work out for a profit. The great uncertainties surrounding C trading and punitive government regulation in the post-Inconvenient Truth era raise the margin necessary for that profit. AGW scare mongering equals higher prices at the bowsers.
Refinery capacity is among the great restraints today, along with cartel intrigue and dysfunctional dictatorships with rotten and corrupt nationalized infrastructure. Still, there is no commodity on Earth so widely and transparently traded as petroleum. That’s a good thing.
It’s a laugh a minute to watch Kev , Wayne and Nelson wrestle with how to lower the price of petrol as if they were Gods on Mount Canberra. They might as well outlaw the drought while they are at it. Of course, they could cut the red tape to build a few more refineries. Nah! Some arthropod with a QC would put a stop to that.
There is the wilderness factor. Most of the continental shelves of the world have not been explored well. There is probably more oil undiscovered there than has been consumed in the whole of the 20 the century.
Should I even mention, at the risk of exciting Louis, that some old depleted reserves (especially salt domes in the Gulf of Mexico) are refilling from depths beneath where no oil was thought to have existed. Petroleum reserve formation is still at the frontiers of basic research. Reserves could be 10x today’s estimates and few researchers would be shocked. But the Rudd government knocks back CSIRO research in all areas but the tautology of “climate change.”
In fact, there is more than half a billion years of carbon sequestration courtesy of Gaia’s carbon cycle that is unlikely to have been exhausted by a century of fairly inept petroleum extraction by a semi-hairless mammal adept with wrenches and 2D seismic surveys… You do the maths.
30 years?? And that’s the good news??
Well Wes – so you say – but there’s plenty of interesting opposite anecdotes as well. How would we really know? Are we being lied too. Manipulated (well let’s hope so).
And “half a billion years” and “semi-hairless mammal” is great rhetoric but is it a mathematical calculation.
Of course philosophically – “Peak anything” is dangerous. The thought of any “limits to growth” could be ideologically terrifying. You could go straight to hell for even thinking it. Even knowing someone who thought it could be very dangerous. Might there be eco-marxists among us just waiting to use this as a scare to regulate you into submission and allocate your share. Who knows.
But anyway if you want to get into some alarmism and after all I am an Alarmist Creep who likes to at least indulge these unholy thoughts.
How about:
Peak platinum – is there enough to go around for everyone in China and India to have a fuel cell or catalytic converter?
http://www.resourceinvestor.com/pebble.asp?relid=29380
or enough fertilser
Peak phosphorus (check Incitec share price?)
http://www.energybulletin.net/33164.html
or forget the batteries – Peak Lithium
http://www.evworld.com/article.cfm?storyid=1180
http://www.evworld.com/article.cfm?storyid=1182
and at this point “lah lah lah I’m not listening” – really winging it – Peak (wait for it) Coal.
environment.newscientist.com/channel/earth/mg19726391.800-coal-bleak-outlook-for-the-black-stuff.html
http://www.energybulletin.net/29919.html
I’m waiting for someone to say we didn’t leave the stone age for lack of gibbers… please don’t.
Wes,
You should be more concerned with an Endering criticism.
Me, I will sit by the sidelines on this one.
You OK Luke?
Wes George – “Every serious petroleum geologist has a chuckle at the mention of peak oil theory, it’s just another Malthusian con.”
No they don’t. There are many serious petroleum geologists that are fully up with peak oil. Its not such a hard concept for a finite resource.
Current resources are also overstated:
http://anz.theoildrum.com/node/4033#more
“The oil is out there, but exploration, patch development and refineries don’t get built if the price-to-earnings ratio don’t work out for a profit”
Yes there is but in smaller and smaller quantities and harder to get locations.
“Should I even mention, at the risk of exciting Louis, that some old depleted reserves (especially salt domes in the Gulf of Mexico) are refilling from depths beneath where no oil was thought to have existed.”
So post the list instead of this.
“n fact, there is more than half a billion years of carbon sequestration courtesy of Gaia’s carbon cycle that is unlikely to have been exhausted by a century of fairly inept petroleum extraction by a semi-hairless mammal adept with wrenches and 2D seismic surveys… You do the maths.”
You are really quite clueless on how oil forms. The oil we use is from 2 distinct times in Earth’s prehistory. Even then the conditions have to right for the oil to form in rocks that contain it. It is a miracle that there is so much oil at all. Which is also the reason that the unexplored areas are unexplored. Drill rigs are expensive and getting more expensive all the time. If you have to drill deep under the ocean then they are more expensive again even assuming you can get one. Most serious petroleum engineers drill where they expect to find some oil not all over the place. It is not a wilderness factor at all.
And remember this is the ABARE that has been predicting $30 a barrel oil for the last 5 years. So far a random number generator has done better.
http://www.aspo-australia.org.au/general/peak-oil-the-elephant-at-the-summit.html
Wes George – “Every serious petroleum geologist has a chuckle at the mention of peak oil theory, it’s just another Malthusian con”
Also the International Energy Agency, which contains a few serious petroleum geologist is about to lower the world reserves:
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601086&refer=latin_america&sid=aBa1AtAo3o4Q
“The world “doesn’t have a problem with reserves, just a problem putting in place production capacity,” Total SA Chief Executive Officer Christophe de Margerie said on May 16. “Even if there is a slowdown in growth, demand for oil will continue to grow while supply is stagnating.”
Raising world oil supply to 100 million barrels a day is “not achievable” in coming years and even reaching 95 million barrels a day is “optimistic,” the Total chief executive said.
There is a fear production has already peaked “in most of the countries in the world,” Libya’s top oil official Shokri Ghanem said in a television interview. Shortfall in supply “is going to be the issue” in future, he said. ”
I guess you could say that someone from Total is pretty serious.
The head of ABARE also seems to think that roosters can lay eggs if paid enough.
I never cease to amazed – Ender believes in miracles! (you sexy thing)
Bang goes the scientific argument.
..and Ender quotes Big Oil!
..another milestone in the journey to enlightenment.
rog,
you quick as lightning, beat me to it!
Ender!
Luke was raving on today, but you as well??
Is it full moon or somet?
Ender is quite sure that despite attractive financial inducements roosters will not lay eggs, clever thinker this guy Ender, should do well in poultry.
Why mut it be oil. UCC powdered coal can be used directly in diesel engines provided it has been de-sulphured and impurities removed.
Well Mark – it’s all about political attitude to resource limits – not science ! Think more expansively.
Anyway Aaron was right – fertiliser prices N,P,K going crazy. Agricultural production is baaaacccckkk !
Ender – a possible explanation is that we’re dealing with a 8088 mob here – no capacity for multi-tasking, pre-fetch, branch prediction or hyperthreading is possible. Not willing to get a bit expansive in case they’re barred from attending future klan meetings at the yacht club.
I worked in the oil and gas fields in the late seventies. The ” consensus ” of all the experts then, that there was only 25 to 30 years of world supply left at that time.
Ender,
just thought this might be the time to remind you that I am still waiting on the experimental proof for the process – zooplankton + biomass ( including mammals, dinsoaurs etc) when buried to a depth of about 300 metres (the deph at which diagenesis is thought to occur) spontaneously produces kerogen, the principal component of oil shales which are presumed to be the precursors of, so caled, fossil fuels. While you are at it, could you also point to existing accumulations of zooplankton and other sea-borne life-forms which are assumed to be the source deposits of kerogen?
Beano reveals an instructive truth. You listening, AC, Ender?
The problem is geophysics and, worse, history isn’t on your side. The Club of Rome circa 1972 declared that peak oil and peak food would occur about 1990. It didn’t. Paul Erhlich (The Population Bomb) predicted peak oil a few years later. Wrong. Alvin Toffler in Future Shock predicted something similar. Bzzt. Jared Diamond predicts peak oil any moment now. And so on. A broken clock is right once a cycle, that doesn’t mean the method isn’t madness. The Malthusian paradigm has been proven wrong on every occasion but one, Easter Island. Go figure.
http://www.ac.wwu.edu/~stephan/malthus/malthus.0.html
Who was it that said insanity was trying the same method over and over again and expecting a different result?
But, but…Bloody hell, we ought to be running out of oil with all our sinfully excessive lifestyle choices! Repent, brothers and sisters, or incur the wrath of hellfire and brimstone! Ironic, how in our modern secular age we cling unconsciously to the need to suffer in order to feel clean. What’s that about?
The economics and the ecology of Gaia are not a zero sum game. Yet, the most common logical error in ecology and economics is an attempt to reduce every issue to zero sum game theory. What’s that about?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-sum
The proof is in the pudding. If we were about to reach peak oil then there would be no worries about AGW. No need for carbon credits, Kyoto or new federal bureaucracies to deal with“climate change.”
Peak oil soon would mean as much as 75% of CO2 from fossil fuels is already in the atmosphere, as we can’t extract that last 20 to 30% out of the ground anyway. Since CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere yield almost geometrically declining returns to climate sensitivity, we can safely punt that perhaps 90% of the warming that is to occur do to the internal combustion paradigm is already in the system.
So, either it’s peak oil now and no more whinging about polar bear extinction in 2050… Or peak oil much, much later this century and then you can then you can cling to your doomsday scenarios. But not both at the same time. OK? Let’s at least make a nodding pretence at logically consistency.
You can’t have your cake and eat it too.
So as to allow the idea that burial of these tings needs the theorey explaining the origin of kerogen.
(the problem with being a scientist is the perpetula scepticism of dogma……..)
rog – “I never cease to amazed – Ender believes in miracles! (you sexy thing)”
The only thing that would amaze me about you is if you posted something with content rather one liners that would not tax the intellectual capacity of a kindergarten child.
Louis – “just thought this might be the time to remind you that I am still waiting on the experimental proof for the process”
As am I waiting for yours of experimental proof that oil is generated abiotically. As mine is the incumbent theory you get to present yours first. However to avoid this thread getting hijacked by biotic oil V abiotic oil I will be saying no more about it.
Wes George – “The problem is geophysics and, worse, history isn’t on your side. The Club of Rome circa 1972 declared that peak oil and peak food would occur about 1990.”
And your point is? Are you trying to say that something cannot happen because people in the past got it wrong?
“The Malthusian paradigm has been proven wrong on every occasion but one, Easter Island. Go figure.”
Actually it hasn’t – try reading the Club of Rome again.
“But, but…Bloody hell, we ought to be running out of oil with all our sinfully excessive lifestyle choices! ”
Peak Oil is not about running out of oil and your attempt to deflect the argument by making it so is just wrong.
Peak Oil is about supply of oil not meeting with demand, not running out of oil. There will be oil for thousands of years somewhere however there will not be 83 million barrels per day forever.
“Peak oil soon would mean as much as 75% of CO2 from fossil fuels is already in the atmosphere,”
Even if oil was most of the fossil fuel emissions which it is not then this is patent nonsense. If we have burnt 50% of the oil this does not equate to 50% of fossil fuels as emissions from oil are about 30% of current CO2 emissions. As has been pointed out again and again the exact concentration do not yield exact geometric returns due to pressure broadening of the spectrum lines and different absorption at different altitudes.
However having said that James Hanson has done some work on this question:
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/2559
and there are some in the Peak Oil movement that do not think there is enough carbon to effect large scale climate change:
http://www.energybulletin.net/29845.html
I don’t know. However ignoring oil shortages by sticking your head in the sand and bleating that there will be oil in 30 years is just plain stupid. Of course there will be oil in 30 years the question is will there be sufficient oil in 30 years. If you look at the data there won’t be enough as supply will collapse as the major oil fields deplete and are not replaced with sufficient new finds. Demand will be cut however how will it be cut – who is going to stop using oil?
The oildrum is a typical peak oil site, cross-linked with matt symons, and real climate; enough said about that. CERA estimates the remaining oil resource base at 3.74 trillion barrels and likely to grow; at 2007 US oil consumption levels, 1 trillion barrels represents 500 years.
As well as the expanding oil base, through exploration and technological improvements and financial inducement through increasing oil prices, there are new processes such as the HOM-TOV process which uses oil-shale byproduct of crude oil refineries.
But the most interesting point of this is abiotic oil;
http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2008/02/14/2162556.htm
ender, why don’t you pack your bags and take a trip to Titan; there’s plenty of fuel for the return trip.
Slim – this story isn’t posted as good or bad news!
Come on Wes – I knew you’d bring up Club of Rome – so you obviously believe there are no resource limits ever. Limits to growth got it wrong in the short run due to underestimation of technological growth – so how much innovation do we have left – finite or endless?
Anyway end of cheap oil with no real transport alternatives would simply see us liquefying coal (already at it in Mongolia) or tar sand and shale oil being brought into production. Plenty of AGW left.
And really what’s all this “repent, fire and brimstone” bunkum – just a little lefty-bashing rhetorical garnish on the argument perhaps. Do you hear me telling you to repent. I’m simply surprised you’re so totally dismissive of oil reserves as an issue.
And Ender run for the hills – it’s the return of the killer mutant arguments – the hydrocarbons on Titan debate. Not again… you’ll get Louis going. Pullease…. ARGH ARGH !!
Ender complains about one liners then posts a page of one liners, a harangue of haiku.
“Peak Oil” doesn’t that it’s run out, just that it’s peaked. The “30 years time frame” would agree pretty well with the peak oil claims. It’s like the classic bell curve. When you go over the peak theres still a time of plenty for a while, it’s just that it’s on the downward slope rather than the upward slope.
Ender. Using Malthusian techniques of extrapolating today’s supply/demand with a ruler into the future is simply not how complex systems work. It has been shown not worked with populations, grain production, mineral commodities or in equity markets and it has certainly failed to accurately to predict petroleum prices. Yet some “futurologists” continue to employ such reductionist techniques in order to make claims, which are probably motivated by less than noble causes. If Macquarie Bank used these predictive techniques they would soon be bankrupt.
Logically, zero-sum Malthusian extrapolations from today’s data can never be accurate or you could simply buy petroleum spot market futures and get rich quick.
Life is a bit more impenetrable than a bell curve.
Moreover, peak oil is not about supply not meeting demand. Supply is determined by a multitude of factors—field development, refinery capacity, exploration, government regulation, tariffs, pipelines, politics, wars, cartels and even cyclones.
Peak oil is about reaching the tipping point where new petroleum discoveries can’t replace the depletion of older fields, not due to any political/economic inefficiencies but because there are simply no great new discoveries to be made.
Supply will always catch up with demand in a free market. The fact that new discoveries will likely be more expensive than the “easy oil” of older reserves to extract is irrelevant. Supply and demand will still find a balance.
It seems more than likely that, as usual, the alarmists have underestimated both the undiscovered reserves and the ever-evolving human ingenuity at extracting these reserves given increasing levels of returns in the market place.
Ender, what you seem to fear is a break down in the market system, a catastrophic collapse, not metaphorically unlike the AGW doomsday scenario you also find so persuasive.
Don’t worry about that, mate. Even if the price of oil rivals that of gold, supply will meet demand.
Luke–Zero-sum minds like to crow that resources are limited, and in a simpleton sort of way that’s true. There are only so many barrels of petroleum in the Earth’s crust.
However, as Buckminister Fuller pointed out many decades ago we are undergoing a technocultural metamorphosis he coined as “ephemeralization.” The philosopher Teilard de Chardin had some influence on Fuller’s meme.
Bucky liked to illustrate ephemeralization with this example—In 1960 the GDP of the US weighed so many tons. By 1970, the GDP of the US weighed only 70% what it did in 1960, but was 200% more valuable.
By 2000 the GDP of the US weighed less than 30% what it did in 1960 but was on the order of three magnitudes increased in value. (Or something on that order, you get the idea.)
Bucky realized that while natural resources are ultimately finite innovation is NEVER limited, and thus resources have a peak life many, many times greater than any simplistic extrapolation of current trends would generate. And, in fact, in many cases may be practically unlimited as technology evolves.
This is the basic paradox of all future studies and yet it seems to be essentially unapplied in climatological scenarios as well as peak oil forecasts.
Gordon Moore, the co-founder of Intel, realized much the same principle when he proposed that the power of integrated circuitry would double every 18 months back in 1965 and the rule still holds true today, although the alarmists regular come out to ‘prove’ it simply can’t go on—there are limits to growth, limits to innovation! Moore’s Law and ephemeralization are the central paradigms of our economy today and provide some optimism for our future “progress.”
The problem lies not in the Earth’s finite resources but in the imaginative limits of those contemplating our current state of evolution and possible future trajectories.
There is an alternative method for drastically rebalancing the oil/energy supply demand equation if there is insufficient supply.
Demand drops drastically.
It is called depression. Heaven help the poor.
Well very interesting that you would mention Buckminister Fuller as he was very concerned about sustainability.
As you would know Moore’s law now only holds up through increasing complexity. Parallelism. So do you know what it takes to program this technology?
What is interesting Wes, is that you do “know” that innovation is unlimited. I do know that humans have been innovative over time. But innovation unlimited? And you lecture us on religious belief. Hmmmmm….
I take everything that ABARE says with a grain of salt. I’ve never known an organisation to be so behind the times, always cocking up their predictions, yet still get so much media airtime.
If ABARE says we have enough oil for 30 years, it means we’ll be down to our last few drops in 3.
Wes George – “Supply will always catch up with demand in a free market. The fact that new discoveries will likely be more expensive than the “easy oil” of older reserves to extract is irrelevant. Supply and demand will still find a balance.”
Ahh the classic economist argument. ie: money can create resources where they do not exist. The point economists and you miss is the EROI of the new discoveries. The tar sands and deep oil all require massive energy inputs to extract lowering the net energy gain. Our technological society is built around the very high energy gain of oil. This is the first time that a society has had to go from a high EROI energy source to lower ones.
Also supply will not catch up with demand if the supply is not available. You cannot create oil out of nothing nor can you extract it if is not there. Demand will reduce to meet supply. However have you considered the problems with that demand destruction? Who is going to miss out on oil? Who is going to convert to alternatives in time for the demand destruction?
The myth of Peak Oil? Is anyone claiming that there is an infinite amount of oil? Is anyone claiming humans have been exempted from the second law of thermodynamics?
Some of the arguments in this thread are reminiscent of those in 19th century Australia who confidently stated that “rain will follow the plough”
Our major weakness is that we have built a civilization on the assumption that we will have infinite access to finite resources – until we are prepared to refashion that economic paradigm we will follow, on a global scale, the pattern of collapse that has been identified by Diamond for individual societies. The naysayers remain confident because they have seen no evidence – they are bit like the first class passengers on the titanic confident that everything is OK because the water has not reached their proveledged deck…yet.
The myth of Peak Oil? Is anyone claiming that there is an infinite amount of oil? Is anyone claiming humans have been exempted from the second law of thermodynamics?
Some of the arguments in this thread are reminiscent of those in 19th century Australia who confidently stated that “rain will follow the plough”
Our major weakness is that we have built a civilization on the assumption that we will have infinite access to finite resources – until we are prepared to refashion that economic paradigm we will follow, on a global scale, the pattern of collapse that has been identified by Diamond for individual societies. The naysayers remain confident because they have seen no evidence – they are bit like the first class passengers on the titanic confident that everything is OK because the water has not reached their priveledged deck…yet.
Wes George – “Ender, what you seem to fear is a break down in the market system, a catastrophic collapse, not metaphorically unlike the AGW doomsday scenario you also find so persuasive.”
Actually I am not in the doomsday scenerio of anything as long as action is taken early. Decisive action to reduce carbon emissions which involve renewable energy and low carbon transportation should avert any catastrophic scenerios.
Having said that there are already signs of unrest over energy prices at $120 per barrel. The alternatives to transportation that our society depends totally on are not being developed fast enough. There could be a period of severe unrest while oil is extremely expensive forcing all other costs higher as is happening now and a time where the majority of transport does not rely on fossil fuels.
What is totally missing from the furore of FuelWatch and high oil prices, perhaps because of this sort of crap that ABARE is putting out, is a crash program to implement alternative fuels.
I had hoped Labor would do this however they are proving to be the same sort of lizards they replaced and in the pocket, just as deeply, of the Greenhouse Mafia.
We need a fast track program to improve public transport so people will actually use it and fast track programs with tax incentives to use plug in hybrids and electric cars and trucks. We should also be promoting natural gas as a transition fuel . None of this is happening as our government flounders from one Fuelwatch disaster to another.
What the hell is Fuelwatch anyway??????
This didn’t get that much coverage:
http://business.smh.com.au/rio-and-bp-ditch-plan-to-build-green-power-plant-20080513-2dvn.html
Its about the cancelling of BP and Rio Tinto’s $1.5billion plan to build a coal-fired plant, that would turn coal into hydrogen for power (alternative fuels ender?), and store the CO2 underground.
Steve – CO2 sequestration is not one of my favourite things because some people may not be as diligent as these people who cancelled the project because the place that they were to store the carbon could not be guaranteed not to leak.
Also making hydrogen from coal still emits CO2 if you cannot sequester it. You also still have to compress the hydrogen and lose 20% of the energy contained in it and then lose another 50% to 70% converting it to electricity in a fuel cell to drive an electric car.
Even if you use coal to make electricity you still lose a lot less energy just charging batteries and then driving an electric car.
Mercedes Benz recently announced several new models of its passenger car range with BlueTec as part of the model name for the United States market. These vehicles combine state of the art diesel technology with AdBlue, an aqueous urea solution which is injected into the stream of exhaust gases. This releases ammonia, of which 80 percent is reduced to form harmless nitrogen and water by the downstream SCR converter. There’s a number of different technologies involved, but the bottom line is that the Benz GL320 BlueTEC, a monster 4WD SUV with a curb weight of 2.5 tons, has claimed fuel consumption of 9.5L per 100 KM, which is less than most 4cyl medium sized cars on the market today. The S300 BlueTEC sold in Germany, a very heavy saloon car, develops 224 HP, and has fuel consumption of 5.4 Litres per 100KM. It also produces only 142 grams of CO2 per kilometre. Now, whilst not that many people can afford to buy a new Benz, the technology will eventually flow through the motor industry as it has done in the past, and today’s luxury features will become tomorrow’s standards. ABS brakes are a case in point – Anti-Lock Braking Systems were invented and produced by Mercedes-Benz, and their luxury cars of the early to mid 1980’s were the first to have them as standard. Within ten years of that time most Western marques had a substantial number of their models standard with ABS, and the technology was being used in trucks as well. Now virtually every new car sold, at least in Australia, has ABS brakes as standard, as do most trucks.
I make this post simply to point out that quite apart from electric and other alternative fuels there is a lot more improvement left in today’s technolgies when it comes to oil consumption, and working the myriad of potential technological advances into future estimates of oil availability would have to have a rather large bearing on the accuracy of those estimates.
Do cars made for the Indian and Chinese markets have ABS brakes?
Just asking.
“.. in the pocket… of the Greenhouse Mafia…”
More over boiled hysteria from the resident conspiracy theorist/
Ender,
Your biotic oil theory is not based on any observational data, nor experiment.
To put it as simply as I can, Biotic oil theory assumes that kerogens found in oil shales and tar sands etc are buried into the earth’s crust and when these hydrocarbon rich sediments reach the oil window, kerogen is thought to break down into petroleum. Deeper burial takes the kerogen into the gas window and natural gas is produced.
So the theory goes.
So how does kerogen form? It is assumed that it forms from the diagenesis of zooplankton and algae deposits in shallow sea sediments. Diagenesis means depth of burial to 300 metrs below the earth’s surface. Any deeper and we start getting into P-T (Pressure Temperature) regines of greenschist metamorphic grade. Obviously the oil shales and etc are not metamorphic rocks, so the maximum temperature would be about 40 degrees Celsius, and pressure (funny none of the Wiki articles mentions pressure) say 1 or 2 atmopheres.
So the problem is – given 1 kilo of zooplankton and algae, held steady and 40 degrees Celsius and 2 Bar pressure – what will happen to the 1kg of biomass physically and chemically?
Experience informs us that methane is produced. This squares up thermodynamically as well (See Gas Resources site).But kerogen is a massively heavy hydrocarbon.
I note:
1. No one has found any massive accumulation of zooplankton and algae in any recently deposited sea floor sediment.
2. No one seems to have done any experiment verifying that this diagenesis is able to transform zooplankton and algae into kerogen.
Therefore the assumption that burial of biomass results in kerogen is not from any scientific observation.
This interpretation, however, is developed from trying to understand how oil shales formed. It is classical deductionism and a logical falacy of the type that if my cat has 4 legs, as my dog, then my cat is a dog.
Hydrocarbons are excellent organic solvents,. and if abiotic oil invades a sedimentary deposit, then it will incorporate all the bio detritus in those sediments.
Existence of biological debris in oil is no proof that it was biogenically formed.
But the biotic oil theorists have one enormous problem – how to spontaneously generate kerogen from buring biomass to depths no greater than 300 metres below surface (the diagenic limit).
And it would have been easy enough to do a laboratory experiment to verify this deduction.
All I am asking is for the empirical evidence that this process actually works.
I repeat – Biomass == > kerogen has never been observed occurring scientifically.
Ball is your court Ender, come up with the scientific evidence supporting Biotic hydrocarbon genesis at near surface depths.
ABiotic oil theory has supporting laboratory experiments confirming it.
I know, I know they’re not worth the effort, Martha, but it’s cocktail hour here at the country club and after a hard day of polo and fox hunting, I’m feeling a bit cocky…
John Tons sez…”The myth of Peak Oil? Is anyone claiming that there is an infinite amount of oil?”
Uh, no…. Maybe, you got the wrong thread? You get the feeling that De Niro is just itching for a fight. You talkin’ to me??
“Is anyone claiming humans have been exempted from the second law of thermodynamics?”
Uh, no…. besides being awkward grammar, it does fit in well with the Warminista idea that the Earth was created perfect and ever since Western Civ came along things have been in steep decline. If only we had stayed Rousseau’s noble savages we could have avoid the coming apocalypse. Damn. I think I’ll have another gin and tonic, Jeevs.
“Some of the arguments in this thread are reminiscent of those in 19th century Australia who confidently stated that “rain will follow the plough” “
I certainly would not characterize Ender and AC arguments as advanced as 19 th century folklore. Malthus was really more a part of 18 th century trends. Today the plough definitely follows the rain.
“Our major weakness is that we have built a civilization on the assumption that we will have infinite access to finite resources”
And just how does one have infinite access to finite resources? Infinite access? I imagine Adam Smith, Voltaire, Aristotle, et al chose their language a bit more carefully when founding a whole civilization. Whatever, see Jean-JacquesRousseau above.
“…until we are prepared to refashion that economic paradigm we will follow, on a global scale…”
Ah, yes, now we have arrived at the main point, haven’t we? It’s not really about saving the planet from a doomsday scenario that is unlikely to occur in any event. It’s about changing the rules of how property is distributed based on demagoguery and fear. Thank God for honest John. Ender and AC refuse to admit as much, coyly striking various contorted poses behind their drought desiccated fig leaves.
“…the pattern of collapse that has been identified by Diamond for individual societies.”
Yeah, we all read Jared’s book. It’s great as far as it goes which is one bus stop short of home. Diamond doesn’t take into account a few cultural traits that are absolutely unique to our society. For one, scientific method in action is self-healing and evolutionarily progressive towards higher states (more energy efficient) of organization (a kind of cultural anti-2 nd Law of Thermodynamics, John). Unlike the Mayans or the Vikings of Greenland we have a self-correction ideation system in place that rewards new paradigms that predict results more accurately than the older ones. Religion, the driving force behind every society save ours, seeks to preserve tradition unto cultural suicide. Jared equating us to those who have gone before is simply wrong. So get over yer cultural cringe, mate. Historically, it doesn’t get any better than this.
“The naysayers remain confident because they have seen no evidence – they are bit like the first class passengers on the titanic confident that everything is OK because the water has not reached their pruveledged deck…yet.”
Back to the hackneyed anachronisms of class warfare. Very revealing. Thank you, Johnny.
Next!
Ender, Luke? You see how easy it is to be honest about your true goals and intents. Borrow some backbone, mates. You’re out to “refashion the economic paradigm,” which means eliminating the bloody free market of goods, services and ideas, which got us into this mess to begin with and redefining private property as the state’s to dispose of as it sees fit. Got it? Now get on with Saving Planet Earth from Capitalist Destruction before it Is Too Bloody Late. We simply can wait for the evidence. We Must Act Now Decisively, even though we don’t have a clue!
Forget FuelWatch! The Rudd government should simply make it a criminal offence to sell petrol for more than 85c a liter. That’ll show big oil greenhouse pocket mafia conspiracy polar bear bashing passengers in First Class!
Ah, they have called us to dinner. And I didn’t even finish my gin and tonic. Gads!
What a load of pseudo-political posturing. You do on Wes. Good to see this sort of National Party nonsense is well alive among the boulders.
It’s simply what are the reserves. Cost of extraction. Demand.
Spare us the politics. We’re asking is there a decent calculated engineering answer to the question.
Frankly I’m not up for quick dislocating shocks. So like to see these things coming and make some decent policy accommodations. Not just drive over a cliff.
Ender
Methane is Ch4
Kerogen is C215 H330 etc.
Just to keep matters within physical reality.
As oil is a mineral resource, its extraction costs depend on market prices – physically there are enormous reserves – but the cost of extracting those decide whether, or not, that happens.
Oil shales and tar sands are uneconomical at present because underground oil is cheaper to extract.
Energy doomsayers have always prophesised “Peak Theories” of what ever energy source they disapprove.
History shows they have been consisently wrong. They forget human ingenuity to adapt – only mindless animals fail to adapt to then become fossils.
Seems ships sailing without winds here, then.
Arrghhhhh!!!!!
“Don’t worry about that, mate. Even if the price of oil rivals that of gold, supply will meet demand.”
You mean there will be a price. Like most resource issues, the problem is easily solved by removing the poor from the market.
SJT
Social democrats remove the poor from the market by implementing minimum wage laws.
“History shows” is not a calculation.
Socialists ensure that there are always poor for the market, since India loosened up its economy the private sector has grown enormously whilst the sector that services the poor, the public service (water, health etc) is abysmal and corrupt.
Louis – “Oil shales and tar sands are uneconomical at present because underground oil is cheaper to extract.”
However both of these sources require huge amounts of energy and water to extract making the energy return marginal at best. Oil shales are bordering on 1:1 energy return and Tar Sands are 1:3 at the best. That is not include the vast amounts of water both of these processes require and the vast amount of environmental destruction they both cause.
Solar panels have an energy return of 8:1 so from an energy perspective it is better to charge a car from a solar panel rather than fuel it with either tar sands or shale oil.
Money is not everything and the energy return is often ignored as tar sands and shale can return on investment in money terms however be marginal or even negative in energy and evironmental returns. It is time to stop money being the deciding factor and let a little science step into it and decide on things with energy return in mind.
BTW I did say that I am not going to engage on abiotic/biotic oil as 3 hijacked threads is quite enough.
“history shows” Monsieur Creep that you didn’t have to:-
1. send a runner.
2. send a carrier pidgeon
3. send smoke signals
4. send a semaphore message
5. get in your car and post a letter etc etc
to make that comment. See, history is marvellous.
Like the last time you bumped your head good and proper, who wants to go there again!
Don’t Panic!
http://www.kitcocasey.com/displayArticle.php? id=1797
If this is the answer, please send your thanks to……
Oppps… history shows you up.
http://www.kitcocasey.com/displayArticle.php?id=1797
Good post wjp. Liquid amonia, 111 octane and readily transportable. Note the above post by steve john re amonia in the Benz SUV.
Anyone check this out? Or did we just accept it.
http://www.dself.dsl.pipex.com/MUSEUM/POWER/ammonia/ammonia.htm
“THE PRINCIPLE
The ammonia motor is a device so obsolete and forgotten that unearthing any information at all has proved quite difficult. The concept is thus; take a tank of ammonia, by which I mean pure liquid anhydrous ammonia, and not the weak aqueous ammonia solution that used to be sold for cleaning purposes. (I can remember my mother having a bottle of “Scrubb’s Cloudy Ammonia”, though why it was cloudy and who Scrubb was are entirely mysterious) The liquid ammonia is allowed to evaporate, which it does readily at ambient temperature, and the resulting gaseous ammonia used to drive something very like a steam engine.
There are of course serious problems with such a simple process. The exhaust gases are not only choking, but they are actively poisonous, and explosive to boot, so exhausting direct to atmosphere is not an option. Another difficulty is that the evaporation cools down the anhydrous ammonia, the rate at which gas is evolved slows down, and the engine is liable to freeze up.
Emile Lamm* solved both snags in one go by absorbing the exhaust ammonia in a tank of water that surrounded the anhydrous ammonia storage tank. Heat is evolved when the exhaust ammonia dissolves, keeping the anhydrous ammonia warm and aiding its evaporation.
* It appears to have been him, anyway. I have so far only discovered one earlier ammonia motor inventor, a Mr Gordon, and technical details are sadly lacking. ”
The only reference I could find for seawater and ammonia is with it being a working fluid in seawater thermal plants.
Normally it is made with:
http://www.creative-chemistry.org.uk/gcse/documents/Module7/N-m07-03.pdf
Ender
You have not replied to any argument I put for abiotic oil theory, let alone any refutation of the problems biotic oil as, only diversionary comments in order for people here to reminded of your presence here.
Therefore no contraductory evidence for Abiotic oil means it is, at the moment, the most plausible explanation for the origin of petroleum.
We are in no danger of running out of oil, 30 years or other.
And then there’s the Kalina Cycle. Or how to wring another 20-30% out of existing power station technology. So, who’s the boffin?
http://vganapathy.tripod.com/kalina.html
Steve: Mercedes-Benz,to their credit, has a habit of not denying rival auto manufacterers access to licenced safety technology.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercedes-Benz#Innovations
See, capitalist bastards, can’t trust ’em’, won’t play by the book, trickery and treachery everywhere (also see big oil)
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives2/2008/05/020589.php
“The head of ABARE also seems to think that roosters can lay eggs if paid enough.”
LOL. Don’t you believe in the free market, Ender?
Louis – “You have not replied to any argument I put for abiotic oil theory”
Yes thats right. I said at the outset that I was not going to reply. If you want a debate get Jennifer to open another thread where we can debate it assuming that I could be bothered.
Remember the last one?
wjp – “And then there’s the Kalina Cycle. Or how to wring another 20-30% out of existing power station technology. So, who’s the boffin?”
It might just be a typo however he is referring to the Rankine cycle:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rankine_cycle
The other thing that bothers me is this:
“Only about 15-20 % of the energy is recovered,compared to 100% in Kalina cycle”
You can’t get 100% back out unless the outlet temperature was 0degK as far as I understand the equations.
The Kalina cycle can recover some of the waste heat from the Rankine cycle however it boosts the efficiency to 50% or 60% like combined cycle gas turbines. BTW gas turbines use the Brayton cycle so is this mentioned?
For a US perspective check this out, and whilst there, have a trawl around other related stories.
(Found on kitco.com by John Nadler)
Ender,
The debate, if any, has stalled because we are waiting for you to provide experimental backing for the biogenic theory – we have head all the rhetoric – its physical fact, experiment, we scientists are after.
Louis – “The debate, if any, has stalled because we are waiting for you to provide experimental backing for the biogenic theory ”
Actually the debate as I recall was your pathetic theories being ripped to shreds by someone who actually knew what they were talking about.
Ender,
I am not sure whether you are dyslectic or not, but any one can read for themselves that the abiotic theory, you attribute to me, is the Russian-Ukrainian theory of abiotic oil. I lay no claim to its creation but I support it totally. I have enormous problems with theories flouting the second law of thermodynamics.
I will summarise the scientific evidence and exerpiments elsewhere for you to misinterpret on your personal web blog.
What is it with you lefties that you cannot separate the theory from the person? My7 pathetic theories…really you are a silly little man.
Oh Look here Ender, we scientists are very uncertain about the origin of oil http://www.livescience.com/environment/051011_oil_origins.html and the more I research this interesting topic the more I realise how little my mates actually know.
It’s all theorising – typical Lyellian Rhetoricism in which scientific truths are worked out by reasonable discussion and general agreement. Pseudoscience that is.
Louis – “I have enormous problems with theories flouting the second law of thermodynamics.”
So do I however nothing in normal oil production contravenes the second law.
“What is it with you lefties that you cannot separate the theory from the person? My7 pathetic theories…really you are a silly little man.”
Really a silly little man now? Frr one so passionate about ad homs you sure dish them out. I think the range of contra theories that you subscribe to actually provides a pretty good picture of you and is hard to seperate. Teenage rebellion at your age – shame.
Ender
Normal Oil production? You mean all the refineries and so forth? To most normal people normal oil production means what Esso, PetroCHina do for a living.
Thermodynamically you cannot spontaenously generate kerogen from burial of biomass in the crust. You need to prove this by showing us experimental data supporting the biotic theory.
You refuse because you can’t.
And as you mention normal oil production, that implies abnormal oil production. Now what does that mean?
And as you have never indicated to anyone that you have read and found flaws in these contra-theories, apart from the fact I support them, (your explanation of intensive variables on your won blog is quite wrong) leads to one conclusion – you have not studied the basics of these contra-theories in order to sink them.
Afraid you might catch some intelli-bug ore something from reading contrabrand literature?
Finally you don’t like the occasional ad hom now do we? You lefties are all the same – dish it out but when it comes back, occasionally, righteous indignation. I rarely dish them out, as the record will attest.
As for your ad homs, your web blog is replete with them, as here.
Ender
at least read this article and then refute it point by point.
http://www.csun.edu/~vcgeo005/Energy.html
Louis – “And as you have never indicated to anyone that you have read and found flaws in these contra-theories, apart from the fact I support them”
Yes, at length, as have other people with far more qualifications than me however this does not seem to matter to you.
“at least read this article and then refute it point by point.”
Don’t have to as it has already been does, again by someone that actually works in the field, as you should remember from the last discussion. Just go back to the last thread on it.
And finally despite my best efforts you have managed to hijack this thread. BTW In all the last few threads try and find one ad-hom from me. I don’t need to insult you as you do a pretty good job of this to yourself.
Ender,
“at length”???? you have not produced any detailed refutation of this article because this is the first time I have ever introduced it on Jennifer’s blog.
As Nigel Calder put it, we are simply being lied to.
Only the last few threads, or should I go back further……
Never mind, (and I wonder if you were ever involved with the Carthew People years back in your neck of the woods).
Ad hom
Actually the debate as I recall was your pathetic theories being ripped to shreds by someone who actually knew what they were talking about.
QED
Louis – “As Nigel Calder put it, we are simply being lied to.”
Yes we are but not by me:
“In summary, petroleum, or rock-oil, is not derived from the burial of organic debris in sedimentary basins. It is continually produced from the earth’s mantle as described by the modern Russian-Ukrainian theory of abiotic oil. It is emphatically not a fossil fuel derived from dead dinosaurs and fish and no one has yet been able to generate petroleum (apart from methane) from organic matter at the temperatures and pressures at the base of sedimentary basins.”
————————–
* A full account of the Abiotic oil theory is presented at http://www.gasresources.net. C. Warren-Hunt has offered another origin for petroleum at http://www.polarpublishing.com/ .
Thanks Louis.
Posted by jennifer at November 5, 2006 09:31 AM”
Follow the link in this on the gasresources site “For reason of this circumstance, a brief introduction to modern Russian petroleum science has been written separately,” and you will find the article. Clearly it has been posted here before – anyone that actually read the links posted by Louis would have seen it.
And the detailed rebuttal was done by Dr Clarke who is far more qualified than me – posted by detribe on this occasion however I posted almost the exact same thing on another thread – this is earlier however.
This is the post – http://www.jennifermarohasy.com/blog/archives/001717.html
“Grassby is a bit of grind to get through in a detailed tour of the history of abiotic oils hypothesis. But you get to this incisive webpage
http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/012805_no_free_pt3.shtml
In closing, we turn to the eminent Australian astrobiologist and geologist, Dr. Jonathan Clarke. Dr. Clarke has produced a list of 16 observations which must be explained by the abiotic hypothesis before it can be seriously considered. We ask that abiotic supporters use this as a checklist, and please do not bother us again until you have successfully addressed each and every one of these points.
Dr. Clarke’s list is as follows:
To deny this [that 99.99999% of the world’s liquid hydrocarbons are produced by maturation of organic matter] means you have to come up with good explanations for the following observations.
1) The almost universal association of petroleum with sedimentary rocks.
2) The close link between petroleum reservoirs and source rocks as shown by biomarkers (the source rocks contain the same organic markers as the petroleum, essentially chemically fingerprinting the two).
3) The consistent variation of biomarkers in petroleum in accordance with the history of life on earth (biomarkers indicative of land plants are found only in Devonian and younger rocks, that formed by marine plankton only in Neoproterozoic and younger rocks, the oldest oils containing only biomarkers of bacteria).
3) The close link between the biomarkers in source rock and depositional environment (source rocks containing biomarkers of land plants are found only in terrestrial and shallow marine sediments, those indicating marine conditions only in marine sediments, those from hypersaline lakes containing only bacterial biomarkers).
4) Progressive destruction of oil when heated to over 100 degrees (precluding formation and/or migration at high temperatures as implied by the abiogenic postulate).
5) The generation of petroleum from kerogen on heating in the laboratory (complete with biomarkers), as suggested by the biogenic theory.
6) The strong enrichment in C12 of petroleum indicative of biological fractionation (no inorganic process can cause anything like the fractionation of light carbon that is seen in petroleum).
7) The location of petroleum reservoirs down the hydraulic gradient from the source rocks in many cases (those which are not are in areas where there is clear evidence of post migration tectonism).
8) The almost complete absence of significant petroleum occurrences in igneous and metamorphic rocks.
The evidence usually cited in favor of abiogenic petroleum can all be better explained by the biogenic hypothesis, e.g.:
9) Rare traces of cooked pyrobitumens in igneous rocks (better explained by reaction with organic rich country rocks, with which the pyrobitumens can usually be tied).
10) Rare traces of cooked pyrobitumens in metamorphic rocks (better explained by metamorphism of residual hydrocarbons in the protolith).
11) The very rare occurrence of small hydrocarbon accumulations in igneous or metamorphic rocks (in every case these are adjacent to organic rich sedimentary rocks to which the hydrocarbons can be tied via biomarkers).
12) The presence of undoubted mantle derived gases (such as He and some CO2) in some natural gas (there is no reason why gas accumulations must be all from one source; given that some petroleum fields are of mixed provenance, it is inevitable that some mantle gas contamination of biogenic hydrocarbons will occur under some circumstances).
13) The presence of traces of hydrocarbons in deep wells in crystalline rock (these can be formed by a range of processes, including metamorphic synthesis by the Fischer-Tropsch reaction, or from residual organic matter as in 10).
14) Traces of hydrocarbon gases in magma volatiles (in most cases magmas ascend through sedimentary succession, any organic matter present will be thermally cracked and some will be incorporated into the volatile phase; some Fischer-Tropsch synthesis can also occur).
15) Traces of hydrocarbon gases at mid ocean ridges (such traces are not surprising given that the upper mantle has been contaminated with biogenic organic matter through several billion years of subduction, the answer to 14 may be applicable also).
16) Traces of hydrocarbons in hydrothermal fluids; these are also all compositionally consistent with derivation from either country rocks or Fischer-Tropsch synthesis.
The geological evidence is utterly against the abiogenic postulate.
We fully agree with Dr. Clarke: the geological evidence does not support the abiogenic hypothesis.
Posted by: detribe at November 10, 2006 09:06 PM”
I am not sure if your memory is still OK. How about you sharpen your research skills a bit before calling someone a liar.
You will now retract the statement.
Louis – “Ad hom
Actually the debate as I recall was your pathetic theories being ripped to shreds by someone who actually knew what they were talking about.
QED”
Yeah right – you remember Dr Steve Short that you ran screaming like a little girl from when he posted real science.
Before Louis claims that this was not on gas resources:
http://www.gasresources.net/energy_resources.htm
Try this link. Also Dr Clark debunks the points raised in this paper as it is just another rehashing of the already debunked abiotic oil theory.
Apologies for this however I did try not to be provoked into hijacking this thread however I could not let the liar claim go by.
This will be the last post from me on abiotic/biotic oil no matter what Louis posts next.
Of course the discussion on Peak Oil has gone be the wayside.
Nice try at informing debate here WJP but it came up against the dull mass of Enders brain. Your clearly indicated amonia might get used in internal combustion (octane of 111) but all Ender could do is run off to find some sort of passive transfer engine based on amonia evaporation.
What a classic. He googles up past failures to inform on the future.
I will be refuting Clark’s list of requirements Abiotic oil theory needs to be considered useful later and will post in my own blog.
I recall having previously refuted it with brief comments but clearly I need to put more detail.
As for the Short comments, I missed those though I vaguely recall it was based on geochemical evidence or something.
Surprisingly no one has yet come up with experimental evidence verifying that subjecting biomass, say zooplankton and algae to slightly elevated temperatures and pressures will cause spontaneous production of kerogen.
Still waiting.
“Your clearly indicated amonia might get used in internal combustion (octane of 111)”
HELLO PEOPLE you may want to take note of the second bit
“The exhaust gases are not only choking, but they are actively poisonous, and explosive to boot, so exhausting direct to atmosphere is not an option.”
Yes it may have an octane of 111 however hydrazine also makes a great fuel – you want to use that? Ever wonder why ammonia is not used as a general purpose refrigerent now? It is TOXIC.
Also where do you get the ammonia???????????? Not from seawater.
Clark refuted here http://geoplasma.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!C00F2616F39D0B2B!175.entry
I dunno Ender, I’ve been busy paying you and your mates pensions. What about this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ammonia#Fuel
Surely automotive tekkanorrigee can be tweaked up, maybe?
http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/content/mar2008/db20080321_748642_page_3.htm
You’ll love this one:
http://www.hydrofuelnh3.com/
&
Bon soir!
Whose predicting that we will run out of oil?
This is persistent stupidity on the part of people who don’t understand the inner-core peak oil model.
The peak oil model doesn’t claim we will ever run out. Its about the effort it takes to pull it out of the ground at the same rate from the traditional land-based oil-fields.
You can go over this over and over and over again and the dumb bastards refuse to take the point.
http://media.smh.com.au/?rid=38340
This probably belongs here.
wjp – “I dunno Ender, I’ve been busy paying you and your mates pensions. What about this:”
There is a sweeping assumption – how do you know that I am on a pension? As to the link:
“Alternatives to the production of ammonia from natural gas and air are uneconomic and the environmental benefits have not been established.”
“Surely automotive tekkanorrigee can be tweaked up, maybe?”
Yes ammonia does reduce NOX emission of diesel however how does that help when there is no diesel?
“You’ll love this one:”
And yes vehicle to grid (V2G) is a great idea however I am not sure running small motors is the best way to do it. As far as I know there is nobody else in the V2G market that is considering this as small motors are very inefficient. V2G for me is using the battery capacity of plugged in hybrids and battery electric cars to support the grid. I am pretty sure that most of them would not consider starting the engine of the PHEV. Interesting link though
wjp – Also you will notice on your links that most of the ammonia currently produced is used for fertiliser production. Any large scale use of ammonia to replace vehicle fuel will, initially at least, cause the price of ammonia to skyrocket. It is already through the roof because of high natural gas prices making fertiliser extremely expensive and contributing to the current food shortage.
If ammonia use as fuel was widespread we would not only be turning food into fuel but also turning the fertiliser to grow food into fuel. This is adding utter stupidity on to gross folly.
Are electric cars really that bad???
Also just some info on cetane rating:
“Cetane number is actually a measure of a fuel’s ignition delay; the time period between the start of injection and start of combustion (ignition) of the fuel. In a particular diesel engine, higher cetane fuels will have shorter ignition delay periods than lower cetane fuels. Cetane numbers are only used for the relatively light distillate diesel oils. For heavy (residual) fuel oil two other scales are used CCAI and CII.
Generally, diesel engines run well with a CN from 40 to 55. Fuels with higher cetane number which have shorter ignition delays provide more time for the fuel combustion process to be completed. Hence, higher speed diesels operate more effectively with higher cetane number fuels. There is no performance or emission advantage when the CN is raised past approximately 55; after this point, the fuel’s performance hits a plateau. In North America, diesel at the pump can be found in two CN ranges: 40-46 for regular diesel, and 45-50 for premium. Premium diesel may have additives to improve CN and lubricity, detergents to clean the fuel injectors and minimize carbon deposits, water dispersants, and other additives depending on geographical and seasonal needs.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cetane_number
Guess what Ender, the emissions from petrol engines (carbon monoxide) are also toxic, in confined spaces. Ditto for NH3 emissions. Another scare story from the usual suspects.
If this gets out, there might be 60 years of oil.
http://abcnews.go.com/Business/Economy/story?id=4750846&page=1
From Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ammonia_production
“Sustainable ammonia production
Ammonia production depends on plentiful supplies of natural gas, a finite resource, to provide the hydrogen. Due to ammonia’s critical role in industrial agriculture and other processes, sustainable production is desirable. This is possible by using renewable energy to generate hydrogen by electrolysis of water. This would be straightforward in a hydrogen economy by diverting some hydrogen production from fuel to feedstock use. For example, in 2002, Iceland produced 2,000 tons of hydrogen gas by electrolysis, using excess electricity production from its hydroelectric plants, primarily for the production of ammonia for fertilizer[3]. In practice, natural gas will remain the major source of hydrogen for ammonia production as long as it is cheapest.”
Note the final sentence, Ender. Once the price of natural gas goes up, and nuclear power kicks in, the cheapest source of hydrogen will be water via electrolisis, combined with our most abundant gas, nitrogen, to produce additional amonia for fuel consumption.
The world already produces 100 million tonnes of it so the economies of scale needed for cheap fuel are already in place.
Ender: Here’s another item on Japanese hybrids, interesting, but….all I can see is embedded energy.
http://www.resourceinvestor.com/pebble.asp?relid=43162
To Louis Hissink:
Thank you for providing the direct link to your point by point refutation of Dr. Clarke’s “final” check list. It’s convincing, with supporting citations, with many by direct links to the citations.
J.F. Kenney is the leading abiotic oil geologist in the United States. His work has never been refuted in a rigorous scientific analysis.
Thanks, for the “oceanic crust is continental” documents, that sets the stage for big breakthroughs in oil exploration and production.
And goes together well with the “mad scramble” by governments to get control of ultra-deep ocean floor for oil exploration.
The “Peak” people are misinformed or worse.
For those still objecting to abiotic oil, please read Mr. Hissink’s refutation of Dr. Clarke’s statements.
For website devoted to abiotic oil, please Google Oil Is Mastery. This website has the best catalog of direct link scientific papers and news articles, and oil industry information regarding abiotic oil on the web that this writer knows.
The science is hard, rigorous, and copious supporting abiotic oil.
See for yourself — “Peak” oil is not science.
Abiotic oil is hard science. Oil Is Mastery.
Ref: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ammonia
Ammonia fuel: the key to hydrogen-based transportation MacKenzie, J.J. Avery, W.H. World Resources Inst., Washington, DC;
Ammonia (NH3) is a high octane fuel (110) that can replace CO2 producing fuels in automobile transportation.
It shares with hydrogen the virtue of yielding only water and nitrogen as combustion products when burned in internal combustion engines but avoids the packaging, safety and logistic problems of using hydrogen fuels in motor vehicles.
Ammonia can be stored under moderate pressure at ambient temperatures. (Its physical properties are closely similar to those of liquid propane.) It can be packaged in a volume compatible with present automobiles. It is used as a fertilizer in quantities of over 100 million tons per year so that facilities for its storage, safe handling, transportation and distribution are available worldwide. It could be an economical replacement for gasoline if the foreseen costs of air pollution and global warming caused by fossil fuels are included in the economic evaluation
hi fine get this inyahoo great blog