Comments by "Neolithic Transit Revolution" (@neolithictransitrevolution427) on "PolyMatter"
channel.
-
2800
-
170
-
107
-
46
-
I don't believe you are looking at this with enough granularity. You talk about the realities of infrastructure and crude characteristics, but then seem to ignore this by the conclusion.
There is frankly no way to look at the Midwest and Rockies without them being import dependent - dependent on Canada, sure, and with legal protection and a near monopsony due to pipelines, but more than half the oil consumed is still imported in these regions.
California as well simply can't be viewed as anything but energy dependent. The refineries need a heavy crude, there is no pipeline capacity with the continent, and again we see growing Canadian fractions but I say energy independence is to ignore reality.
We can only say the US south, from Permian shale and Offshore, is an actual net surplus. And it's an enormous surplus, no doubt. But you can't look at a basement full of people drowning and an 11th floor of people dying of thirst and say there seems to be no issues with water access. Not only is there no way to move Permian shale throughout the country, but it's the wrong "flavor" for almost all the infrastructure it's near.
A hypothetical refinery has a pipe a meter in diameter with oil flowing in. Let's say it was built for heavy oil, the oil enters the distillation chamber and is seperated into components according to the size of molecules. The really light molecules, 1-3 carbons (methane, ethane, propane) exit out a 1 inch pipe at the top, another 1inch pipe for butane, a 2 foot diameter pipe for gasoline which is a mix ~10 carbon long molecules, a foot diameter for diesel which is heavier, and then some real heavy stuff out the bottom. And that all works because I know the oil coming in has ratios that break up to fit the pipes going out. If you decide to try and switch that input oil to something light, you have to reduce the amount of oil you're processing, because the fractions have changed. Suddenly that 1 inch pipe at the top is completely full, even though the gasoline take away pipe is half full, and the Diesel is near empty. And shale oil IS light, super light, sometimes even called ultralight. In some cases it's comparable to that 1 inch pipes output, or condensate, or NGL liquids. Which is a huge problem, because that shale oil requires an enormous amount of diesel to access, but gives very little back. You cannot run the US economy on shale oil, I might be able to fill my car, but construction vehicles? Transport trucks? Farm Tractors? Ships, trains, fire trucks etc? That's why we saw Diesel prices skyrocketing after Russia invaded Ukraine.
And US refineries, most relevant for this discussion in the Gulf but also in Chicago and California, are built for the heaviest possible oil. Talking about replacing imports with shale oil isn't just getting less diesel out of a barrel, it's talking about using that 1 meter input pipe at half capacity, because your methane outtake and gasoline outtake are full at that point.
But, as bad as all that, most of the wasted equipment is related to the really heavy sludge at the bottom. US refineries are the most advanced and expensive, because they have the equipment to upgrade that sludge into something more like regular oil. Gulf refineries actually buy the sludge from other countries refineries, that used to include Russia's. All that equipment goes completely unused is you try to force shale to be used. Which is going to add to gas prices, because those refineries compete by buying cheap oil to make up for their high cost, and shale oil has just about the highest production cost in the world, only beat by strip mining bitumen in Fort McMurray.
*All numbers should be taken as examples and not literally.
39
-
33
-
21
-
16
-
11
-
11
-
7
-
@Ray_of_Light62 I agree, but I think oil production from shale will.
Shale fracturing for NG will be a long term industry. But Shale oil is a temporary side effect. We can see the Bakken, the first shale plays, is decreasing output annually. Same with Eagle Ford. And the average well productivity in the Permian is declining.
"Shale oil" used to refer to using oil shale, and things like the Permian were called "light, tight oil" because it is light, and it's in tight rock formations. The tighter the formation, the lighter the hydrocarbons. The first wells are drilled in the easiest, most productive locations, which have the least tight formation, and therefore the "heaviest" (in quotes because it's still very, very light) oils. As time has gone by, wells in the Permian are shifting to less ideal sites (tighter), and getting lighter, and therefore gassier. So each barrel of oil is actually half a barrel of oil and half a barrel of NG, when it used to be 75/25. And the half that is oil is still getting lighter, more butane and less gasoline.
The big issue here is all the pumps run on diesel. But the light shale oil has a smaller fraction of the heavier hydrocarbons, notably those that make diesel. A barrel of Brent (global standard) produces more than twice the diesel you get refining WTI (the oil from the Permian). So even for NG fracking, I think we will need to commercialize a technology to use wet CNG from nearby wellhead to run the pumps, which I've seen in development. The diesel to NG equation just doesn't work. But shale oil has never really worked. Because OPEC exists, and keeps prices at a low enough level for the fracking industry to just barely cover expenses. And if OPEC didn't exist, oil would be so cheap that it never would have made sense.
5
-
@mignik01 So first, I quite clearly said oil would remain needed for decades for both an energy source and petrochemicals. But nowhere near a quarter of oil is used as petrochemical feed stock. Naphtha is the main feed stock and it's like a tenth of a barrel. By 2050 I'd expect US oil demand to still be a third of what it is today, mainly gasoline being displaced along side a drop in Diesel from some rail and trucking electrification and a drop in fracking which uses large amounts. Maybe that gets replaced by biofuels but I genuinely hope not.
But obviously I disagree on the point of solar for Electrical generation. Solar has increased 8 fold over the last decade, even halving that growth rate and it's the majority over the next. And the amount of manufacturing for solar has grown enormously and continues to grow. Look at China's build out of solar. Incredibly and historically rapid. The price solar can be produced for shows a clear market superiority that even Texas embraces.
Again, I think existing NG plants used for peaking will be repurposed for combined cycle use to increase capacity and be heavily used over night. I don't think 24 hour storage will be common until 2040. But 2-4 hour storage for use in the evening is already commercialized and growing. And I think Solar with storage that keeps output generally stable through the day, will continue it's rapid growth.
I have nothing against nuclear. I think SMRs could be a key part of the energy make up, even large power plants in some large regions. I think industrial heat would likely be best served by SMRs, the Oil sands in Canada, even shipping could be transitioned to SMRs. But in terms of electrical production, excluding certain highly dense Urban regions or particularly cloudy geographies, I don't believe nuclear can compete with solar.
5
-
5
-
4
-
4
-
4
-
4
-
4
-
@LeftWingNationalist I disagree, the Economic system of Fascism is National Syndicalism with a focus on Autarky (although much like many "socialist" or "capitalist" countries, this may be co-opted into an authoritarian regime not practicing the nominal system). Fascist also seperate people into groups, but this is based on area of economic engagement (agriculture, mining) and not class.
However, the national rebirth and historic heroism myths are absolutely core aspects, as you say. Likewise the identification and solution to a "national problem" (although I don't think this problem has to be a population of scape goats).
A correction to your comment, hyper inflation in Germany occured due to french occupation of the Rhine land industrial region and subsequent government sponsored strike, which destroyed German industrial output. The hyperinflation was nearly a decade before the great depression, although the economy was still increadibly weak at this time.
I find the rightwing left wing labels not super useful, I would agree it generally targets right wing (blue color, lower income workers and rich industrialist) electorate, but remember many of the early fascists were formerly communists.
Falange Española de las JONS leader José Antonio Primo de Rivera said: "[B]asically the Right stands for the maintenance of an economic structure, albeit an unjust one, while the Left stands for the attempt to subvert that economic structure, even though the subversion thereof would entail the destruction of much that was worthwhile." while arguing that it was a thrid way ideology out side either left or right.
4
-
4
-
@mignik01 I guess by default I have to agree the share of oil going to petrochemicals will increase since I think the share going to fuel will go down. But I think that 55% number is many because the IEA also sees a global decrease in demand by 2030. And I have to say that 12% is a lot closer to my claim of around 10%. The point to remember is Petrochemical feed stock is generally the lighter end of hydrocarbons. So shale oil from the US, it might actually be nearly half a barrel. Because you can put those small molecules together to make polymers. But you can't just use the entire barrel that way, the heavier end that goes into gas and diesel and jet fuel, until you get back to the really heavy stuff where you make lubricant and carbon fibers.
I think short haul trucking will likely be electrified. I agree long haul trucking will remain Diesel.
I don't think physics really has much to do with it. I think the shear economy of scale is what is most relevant now. Even without efficiency improvements, the module nature means manufacturering millions of panels and installing millions. The same is true for batteries. These aren't technically complex items. And the manufacturing is growing in the US, in China, and in India and Europe. Look at China, they could built their entire grids worth of capacity in about 5 years. That's just unparalleled. And the US is following suit to avoid being caught with the more expensive energy. Even without improvement solar is the cheapest cost of energy.
Again, it costs less than nuclear. That's just the reality. No one is even pretending to have a nuclear power generation system in the range of solar.
Sure, nuclear is "denser". And? Roof top solar destructively competes with any utility delivered power, if half a block has solar and a battery, the other half doubles all their transmission and distribution fees, which are already the majority of cost.
Solar is highly reliable. The sun rises daily. Utility projects in Texas or the West or south California are in regions where you might have a half dozen clouds for half the year. And solar still works with clouds, just less. And, AC demand is a huge portion of consumer demand, and fits perfectly with solar. Some days you will have lower solar. On those days NG will be run.
But you don't run a nuclear plant at night and occasionally, and nuclear doesn't compete in the day.
Again, nuclear for process heat with co-generation makes a lot of sense for industrial clusters. Nuclear might make more sense in New York and the surrounding area with an enormous density of people and more regular cloudy conditions. But across the majority of the majority of regions, solar wins.
I think it's one of the greater ironies that the US north East and Europe were the two areas to first push solar, when they are likely the two areas worse suited to it.
But regardless. No one is building nuclear right now. Not anywhere near the scale of solar. Even if you're right, solar will have won before Nuclear gets to the starting line. And nuclear only works when you have large amounts of unmet demand. If a region has electricity you can't just add a GW of power.
That said, my belief is that nuclear is a big part of China's plan. Everyone is always talking about them building coal, but you have to note their coal plants are much more advanced than the ones built in North America or Europe 30 years ago. Anything built in the last 10 years is super or ultra critical. And I think they are working on SMRs so in the 2030s they can rip out the boilers of these coal plants and plug the nuclear reactors in.
4
-
4
-
3
-
3
-
3
-
3
-
3
-
3
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
Shale oil is dead. The growth we've seen in US output was entirely temporary. The Bakken and Eagle Ford have already passed peak production. In the Permian per well output is already dropping. Reinvestment is very low, many of the "new wells" are DUCs, drilled but uncompleted wells from below Covid being brought online. The rig fleet has halved since 2019, and again, that's while seeing declining well productivity.
In your top comment you off handedly say its never made a profit and lost 10s of billions. It will never make a profit. 2022 high oil prices bailed out investors, thats why we see no reinventment. Its the marginal producer against a cabal, fracking for oil in a free market will always expand until reaching its production cost, leaving very small margins of profit even at enormous output.
Shale oil basically uses heavy oil/diesel to pull very light oil out of the ground. It's very expensive. If they can use wet wellhead CNG to run the pumps, the economics improve. Because Shale oil co-produce a lot of NG. But NG prices are absurdly low, and LNG exports seem capped at this point. And as the Permian ages, average barrels are getting lighter and gassier. There is a reason Biden can point to all these unused leases - the Russian invasion of Ukraine and sanctions gave the industry a chance to exit the market without a loss it's not expanding, and by the end of 2026 the Permian will be declining and national output will be declining.
2
-
2
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
@kzazazazk
I did include the estimated amounts on the shelf. You're 3 billion figure is easily sourced and clearly the proven reserves. We agree the rest is not currently economically viable; although, economically viable also includes legal restriction, and with the new government that's open to change.
Again, the point of the other guy was that if Alaska had a population density anywhere near the other states average, and if that population weren't focused on the Southern most areas, the economics would be different.
I don't know why you are being so aggressive and rude about this. The two of you are disagreeing about different things. He is saying that the economics are bad because Alaska has no infrastructure or, really, economy outside a pipeline. You are debating proven reserves. That's not the same as oil in the ground, which is stated by the Artic Institute, Resource development council of Alaska, and US Department of the Interior to be much higher than the 3.1 figure.
1
-
1
-
1