Posted by Max Dunn Sat, 08 Mar 2008 00:33:21 GMT | 5 comments
I was trying to explain to my wife how an air car worked, and with a smile on her face she said “So it farts as it moves forward?” Well maybe that sums it up nicely.
But do air cars really make sense? The information from the manufacturers seem like they are the solution to our energy crisis, and to everything else too [1]. But there are several fundamental problems with air cars.
Posted by Max Dunn Fri, 07 Mar 2008 04:18:13 GMT | 1 comment
There is a lot of oil in Canadian oil sands. So it is easy to believe that even when OPEC’s production starts to fall, Canadian oil sands can make up the difference. However, the problem is not the amount of oil – the problem is separating the oil from the sand which is a slow and resource intensive process.
According to the Master’s thesis of Bengt Söderbergh [1], natural gas availability is likely to limit oil sands production in the long term to about 3.6 million barrels per day (mbd).
David Hughes, a geologist with Natural Resources Canada, believes that the peak will never exceed 2.5 mbd due to natural gas, water, diluent and infrastructure constraints. [2]
For comparison, the U.S. uses 22 mbd and worldwide demand is 86 mbd. So it is unlikely the Canadian oil sands will be able to ever provide a significant amount of the world’s oil.
Posted by Max Dunn Tue, 04 Mar 2008 04:07:28 GMT | 1 comment
Last weekend, the Saudi Oil Minister, Ali al-Naimi said, “From now there’s a line below which prices won’t fall.” Further, he added that the Saudis have no plans to expand oil production beyond the 12.5 million barrels per day it hopes to have by 2009.
This statement could be the first real admission by the Saudis that they can’t pump as much extra oil as they previously claimed, and a real sign that they have reached, or are close to, peak production.
Posted by Max Dunn Tue, 12 Feb 2008 20:32:09 GMT | 2 comments
I should ride my bike more. It is good exercise and saves the environment. However, I don’t like to ride my bike on everyday errands.
I was reminded of this today when I got new tires for our car. Like usual, I threw my bike in the back and rode home after dropping off the car. It isn’t far, about 2.5 miles, but I was hot and sweaty when I got home. I was smart this time and brought a piece of string to wrap around my pant leg. Usually I forget this and wind up getting chain oil on my pant leg.
When the car was ready, I rode back to the shop to pick it up, and I was a bit tired.
So it certainly worked out fine to ride my bike, but it isn’t something that I would normally do. Also, for the same reasons, I don’t think we can expect many Americans to forgo their cars and start doing a lot more bike riding either. Good thing I have my electric scooter to scoot around on!
Posted by Max Dunn Wed, 06 Feb 2008 01:33:51 GMT | 2 comments
Back in 2004, there were four oil fields in the world which produced over one million barrels per day. Ghawar, which produced 4.5 million barrels per day (bpd), Cantarell in Mexico, which produced nearly 2 million bpd, Burgan in Kuwait which produced 1 million bpd and Da Qing in China which produced 1 million bpd [1].
However, Contarell hit its peak in 2004 and has been in decline ever since. In 2008, it is expected to produce about 1.4 million bpd [3] and continue to decline at a rate of about 14% [2].
The Cantarell field provides 60 percent of Mexico’s total production. Mexico is the second largest supplier of oil to the U.S. [3].
This is another indication that the world-wide supply of oil will soon fall below demand.
References:Posted by Max Dunn Tue, 05 Feb 2008 23:45:54 GMT | no comments
The Ghawar field in Saudi Arabia is by far the largest oil field in the world accounting for more than one-half of all oil production in Saudi Arabia. It was discovered in 1948 and has been producing 5 million barrels of oil per day for the last 10 years [1]. However, many believe that Ghawar has passed its peak [2][3][4].
Here is another detailed and technical analysis of the oil depletion levels of Ghawar by Stuart Saniford [5]:
While much of this information is very technical and difficult to browse through, the pictures that show how much of Ghawar is now filled with water graphically illustrates the problem. Saniford shows:
“The northern half of Ghawar is quite depleted.”
and
“In particular, Saudi oil production has been falling with increasing speeed since summer 2005, and overall, since mid 2004, about 2 million barrels of oil per day in production has gone missing. That’s 2.5% of world production.”
Posted by Max Dunn Thu, 31 Jan 2008 00:16:29 GMT | no comments
It is common knowledge that buses are energy efficient, right? I mean shouldn’t we all ride the bus rather than drive a car? Well a study looked at this more closely and found out something interesting. Here are some figures for passenger miles per gallon (PMPG) for various forms of transportation:
Wow, look at that: city buses only get about 33 PMPG – this is even less than a normal car with 2 people which gets 44 PMPG! I guess to be more green, we should all avoid the bus and drive our cars instead. :-)
Reference: Comparison of Energy Use & CO2 Emissions From Different Transportation Modes
Posted by Max Dunn Fri, 25 Jan 2008 01:40:03 GMT | no comments
There are several better energy alternatives to power cars than using gas. The top ones are hydrogen, air or battery. However, it turns out that there are big differences in the efficiencies of these technologies. For 100MJ of input electricity, this is how far each of these cars could go: [18]
So it turns out that battery electric vehicles are 3 times more efficient than either compressed air or fuel cell vehicles!
Posted by Max Dunn Wed, 23 Jan 2008 18:33:26 GMT | 8 comments
I don’t have a lot of confidence in PG&E. It seems that every time we have a big storm, our power goes out. Once, it took 3 days for them to get the power back on! So I have been considering installing a battery backup system for my house to get through these power outages.
If I install a battery backup system, I was wondering if it would be profitable to charge up the batteries at night when electricity costs are low, at $0.05/kWh, and then use it during the day when electricity costs are high, at $0.11/kWh to $0.29/kWh [9]?
Posted by Max Dunn Wed, 23 Jan 2008 16:47:15 GMT | no comments
What do we use all our oil on? Here is a breakdown from the year 2000:
From: DETAILED BREAKDOWN OF U.S. PETROLEUM USE
In summary, cars use about 41%, trucks 13% and planes 7%. So if we want to reduce the amount of oil we use, then reducing our transportation usage will be effective, since transportation comprises about 60% of all oil usage.