Bad news for peak oilers:Energy crisis is postponed as new gas rescues the worldPeak oilers live in a doom world where technological breakthroughs are unheard of. I bet there were "peak longevity" nuts 100 years ago who said that there was no way our average lifespans would exceed 70. Mankind has tapped out its ingenuity!
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I still think he misses it by just an inch. If I can have compressed natural gas as a fuel, why would I want an electric car?
Everybody should go electric. Then gasoline would drop to nothing and I can drive my Suburban for less than the masses would pay for high cost, shortage electricity( Remember, this is enviro/nutter/nimby land. No generation plants for you!)
By the way, the BBC is reporting on the now 11th year of global cooling, which us wacko AGW types have been saying for years now. Poor Al Gore, maybe he can go back to that divinity school he flunked out of to get pulled out of his journalism job in VN. Or he can just stay on his 110' house boat, 20k sq ft house, G5 jet...
there's plenty of gas at $8-10/mcf, but one problem is that the price is $4 and most drilling has stopped. a portion of the rig activity and most of those massive frac jobs aren't economic now.
it's great now for consumers, it appears that there is infinite gas, but there will be a natural gas price spike either at the end of this winter or the end of the next winter.
The article mentions 60 years of supplies at current usage, but if we go to an all cng car fleet that 60 years will come down in a hurry to something like 42. http://www.theoildrum.com/node/5615
of course I'm all for drilling our way out of the problem, but 42 years of total production would mean peak gas would hit around 2030.
much better to build nuclear plants and NG fired generators and start working towards all electric cars. that way we're working towards a real solution like space based solar power or fusion or unobtanium, instead of just punting the energy problem down the road.
Well, if we went to CNG for our cars the prices certainly would spike. But at that price, might not shale oil then be competitive? Wish I remembered where, but I recall reading when oil spiked that shale oil was now economically viable (Not politically viable, but that's another story.)
Michael, there are tons of references. I read them as well. Shale oil should be economical at the current price level.
Problem is, if you were running an oil company would you commit billions in capital knowing that in a year or so prices could crash?
National Geographic printed a special edition in 1981 that I've written about on my old deleted blog. This edition had a whole section on shale oil, and I think it was Shell that was involved. People were panic stricken about running out of oil, Shell bit the bullet, then quit the project two years later after losing billions.
Actually, 100 years ago I think 'peak food' was the issue of the day. Most folks expected that the world's food production would be unable to handle the rapidly growing population. The Green Revolution quietly took care of that problem. The guy responsible for it just died recently.
That was Dr. Norman Borlaug, who has saved more lives than any other human who has ever existed.
Electric cars won't be big until somebody solves the battery problem. Lead acid is too heavy and bulky and there's not enough readily available lithium in the world for Li batteries in every car.
I expect that we'll have a mixed fleet in 20 years, with gas and diesel still the majority. There's a reason why gasoline and diesel beat out electric, steam, and vegetable oil powered vehicles 100 years ago. You just can't beat the energy density hydrocarbons.
Has anyone seen an estimate of the electric power needed to convert to 100% electric autos...hybrids have potential but the greens keep talking about plugging in to the grid in a child like manner. The power grid has been under funded for generations due to regulatory restraints..much less baseload generation issues.
Oil is for transportation gas is for heating.
right now oil is for transport, gas is for heating but in 20 years that gas and oil might be in short supply.
now is the time to build nuclear, rebuild the grid etc, because it will take every bit of 20 years to get it done.
I'd love more nuclear, but traditional nuke power plants are *much* more expensive to build than coal plants.
At least as long as we ignore the 100-car coal trains the latter requires every few days.
And there is plenty of lithium available to make batteries.
The problem remains that large-format lithium batteries (not laptop-size cells) are EXPENSIVE.
So right now it only makes economic sense (barely) to use a battery pack good for a few dozen miles, coupled with a gasoline-burning "range extender".
The above combination is very economical to operate (2 cents/mile on electricity, 50 mpg on gasoline)
One could of course fuel that range extender with CNG instead (very clean, but lower fuel economy than gasoline)
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