Energy Security

[Rick M]

PB,
Thanks for those links. I had seen the UC-Davis study but not the CFR one.

Meanwhile, there have been a few developments during the past 12 days.
Two weeks ago, the International Energy Agency released its annual World Energy Outlook.
Last week, the New York Times published "There will be fuel," a rosy prognostication by Clifford Krauss.

Energy Bulletin has just published an open letter to the NYT by Canadian geoscientist David Hughes, explaining why Krauss' article is "inaccurate, misleading and unhelpful:"
http://www.energybulletin.net/storie...new-york-times

[Rick M]

A draft of Staff Working Paper #6 by the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling was released a few days ago. The document is titled, Stopping the Spill: The Five-Month Effort To Kill the Macondo Well (39 pgs).

A review of this document has just been posted at EB:
http://www.energybulletin.net/storie...-macondo-spill

[AdamG]

The Navy is developing biofuel-burning F-18 fighter jets and hybrid-electric warships to increase energy independence. Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus discusses those initiatives, and retired Army Gen. Steve Anderson talks about what he learned about energy-efficient camps while in Iraq.

http://www.npr.org/2010/12/03/131785...he-Battlefield

[SethB]

Biofuel combat vehicles are a publicity stunt. Domestically, we can produce 40 times the amount of oil that the DoD uses every year.

Add in Mexico and Canada, and there is no strategic vulnerability in the military sense.

[Rick M]

Seth,
I agree with you on your first point.
Like shale gas, I think the biofuels have been greatly over-hyped (though for different reasons).
The net energy gain on corn ethanol is marginal (with Pimentel's study even showing a net loss), and Brazilian sugar and cellulosic being somewhat better, but still nothing like the energy profit that we enjoyed for over a century from conventional crude.

However, the US military uses about 400,000 bpd (most of it for the Air Force), and the assertion that US domestic production is 40 times greater than this is incorrect: it's more like one-third of that figure (ie. 13 times greater), since the US currently produces about 5 mbpd.

I would certainly dispute your final point.
Mexico is in steep (and probably terminal) decline.
Canada is your number-one supplier, true, but please be aware that the eastern half of my country (by population) is 90% dependent on overseas oil (everything from Toronto, east).
Should we have a global oil supply crunch (as many are predicting) there will be great political pressure to move oil which presently flows south to the USA, eastward to supply eastern Canada.
So I would not be too assured of US oil supply from either Mexico or Canada (for very different reasons).

As for strategic vulnerabilities, I think this year's report from the German military analysts says it all: our focus should be less on fueling the troops, and more on fueling the economy which funds the troops.
Without a solid tax base, and perhaps faced with domestic social disorder, military forces everywhere may find their capabilities severely restricted.

http://www.energybulletin.net/storie...report-context

[Rick M]

"The Coming Famine" by Australian analyst Julian Cribb was recently released (248 pgs).
In this audio interview (with visual accessories) he examines the convergence of factors (water, declining foodland, CC, population growth, urbanization, etc) but he repeatedly mentions the depletion of non-renewables: oil and fertilizer (Part 1, 15 mins).
http://peakoil.com/consumption/peak-...coming-famine/

Meanwhile, both USDA and Agriculture Canada have not only conducted no study on peak oil, they still have not even conducted an analysis of the likely impacts to the agri-food sector of the much broader topic of "the end of cheap fossil fuels."

[Rick M]

A pair of articles was posted today at Energy Bulletin:
1. an annotated bibliography of the LFE research:
http://www.energybulletin.net/storie...d-bibliography

2. a supportive response to the article which was submitted by Kathy Leotta and her colleagues last month:
http://www.energybulletin.net/storie...ly-disruptions

[Rick M]

Today the Guardian published the transcript of a US embassy cable which summarized an interview with Dr. Sadad al Husseini in late 2007:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2...il-saudiarabia

Saudi Arabia is the world's "swing producer," the only country which is believed to possess the ability to increase production quickly and significantly.
Dr. al Husseini questions whether Saudi Arabia could sustain production levels of 12 mbpd much beyond 2020.
In this respect, the projection of Dr. al Husseini is consistent with at that of Chatham House analyst Paul Stevens, who expects Saudi export capacity to decline after 2015 and to end around 2040:
http://www.chathamhouse.org.uk/publi...view/-/id/645/

As an indication of the expertise & credibility of Dr. al Husseini, this interview is offered:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cd7QGbNKxoQ

Bottom line: when production from Ghawar stalls, Saudi Arabia will stall, and then global oil production will almost certainly be in permanent distress.

[AdamG]

BEIJING – Hackers operating from China stole sensitive information from Western oil companies, a U.S. security firm reported Thursday, adding to complaints about pervasive Internet crime traced to the country.
The report by McAfee Inc. did not identify the companies but said the "coordinated, covert and targeted" attacks began in November 2009 and targeted computers of oil and gas companies in the United States, Taiwan, Greece and Kazakhstan. It said the attackers stole information on operations, bidding for oil fields and financing.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110210/...s_cyberattacks

A new drilling technique is opening up vast fields of previously out-of-reach oil in the western United States, helping reverse a two-decade decline in domestic production of crude.

Companies are investing billions of dollars to get at oil deposits scattered across North Dakota, Colorado, Texas and California. By 2015, oil executives and analysts say, the new fields could yield as much as 2 million barrels of oil a day — more than the entire Gulf of Mexico produces now.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110209/...s/us_shale_oil

[Rick M]

Hi, Adam

Thanks for your posts.
On the first one, I view it as yet another indication of how assertive China is on energy... they seem to be very peak-oil aware and proactive on it, unlike us North Americans.

On the second, I would offer several cautions. The environmental risks of fracking have only recently come to the fore, and we will all have to await the EPA's determination. North Dakota is trumpeted as USA's #4 producer, but it has yet to hit 350,000 bpd (in a nation that consumes around 20 million. By the time oil shale production hits 2 million, many of the world's other sources of oil could be seriously depleted. Furthermore, the net energy return on oil shale is relatively low, so those 2 mbpd will require a good deal of fossil fuel to extract and refine. As that Wikileaks thing from Saudi Arabia suggests, what we really need to beware of is export availability.

Oil shale will help, and there's lots of it, but there are other factors that we need to consider as well.

I appreciate your interest, Adam

- Rick

[Bill Moore]

At today's oil prices of roughly $90 per barrel, slashing imports that much would save the U.S. $175 billion a year. Last year, when oil averaged $78 per barrel, the U.S. sent $260 billion overseas for crude, accounting for nearly half the country's $500 billion trade deficit.

From one of the articles that Adam posted, this is illuminating.

[Rick M]

True, Bill

But I fear that US oil imports could drop for an entirely different reason: export decline.
Not only is the US post-peak, so are UK, China, Norway, Mexico, Indonesia, Egypt, etc... even Canada for conventional oil. By 2020, Mexico may have evaporated as an exporter, as will UK.
Meanwhile, the eastern half of Canada's population is supplied 90% from overseas. I live in eastern Ontario, and by 2020 we will almost certainly need to be supplied from Alberta, not Algeria (which is now our #1 supplier). What this will do to the USA's #1 source of supply remains to be seen.

The Bakken and the Eagle Ford are each expected to ultimately produce 4 billion barrels of oil. That would make them the fifth- and sixth-biggest oil fields ever discovered in the United States. The top four are Prudhoe Bay in Alaska, Spraberry Trend in West Texas, the East Texas Oilfield and the Kuparuk Field in Alaska.

This is rather misleading: there are qualitative differences between Prudhoe and East Texas gushers and the two oil shale deposits, in terms of both flow rate and net energy/EROEI. Furthermore, the USA can consume the 4 billion barrels cited in about 8 months, but of course oil shale can't trickle that fast.

Houston, we have a problem....

[Rick M]

There are parallels with Saudi Arabia, which we cannot underestimate.

Just as the heart of Libya's oil industry is in the eastern region (where support for Gadhafi was obviously weak), the heart of Saudi production is in its Eastern Province.

This province is home to the world's two largest oil facilities at Abqaiq and Ras Tanura, the mighty Ghawar oil-field, and the headquarters of Saudi Aramco. Its largely Shia population does not subscribe to the predominant Wahhabi form of Islam.
There are reports of quiet protests during the past few days:
http://www.thepeninsulaqatar.com/qat...-province.html

There have also been several al Qaeda plots to destroy major Saudi oil facilities since the assault on Abqaiq five years ago this week.

There is much to be wary of here... we take a great deal for granted.

[slapout9]

RickM,
What is your opinion on Low Energy Nuclear Reactions. They supposedly are the only source of energy production that produces more energy than it consumes. The patents on this process are supposed to be nearing expiration. If that is true we will finally have a source of inexhaustible Energy.

[Rick M]

Hi, Slap

I know very little about this, though I do remember the flurry of excitement 30 or so years ago re cold fusion.
I'm assuming that this is correct (that LENR and "cold fusion" are the same thing):
http://www.lenr-canr.org/

The US Army put out this concise paper (8 pgs, 2007) on our hopes of getting something for nothing:
http://publicintelligence.net/ufouo-...gy-assessment/

[Polarbear]

So finally I'm back again. This week I learned about a new and interesting project that could solve some of the problems of our oil based industries. A group of scientists of the Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich/Switzerland in Cooperation with the Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI) and the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena, CA succeded producing a preliminary stage of fuel and kerosene from water and carbon dioxide (CO2) by using a solar cavity-receiver reactor.
The researchers calculate that the technology could be commercialised within the next eight years. I will meet the head of the research group by the end of April on a roundtable of ASPO Switzerland. I hope I will get more details there.
The results of the research group were published in Nature http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.1197834. A short description of the project was posted on the ETH Life website: http://www.ethlife.ethz.ch/archive_a...er_reaktor_per

Wish you all a nice weekend!

PB

[slapout9]

So finally I'm back again. This week I learned about a new and interesting project that could solve some of the problems of our oil based industries. A group of scientists of the Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich/Switzerland in Cooperation with the Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI) and the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena, CA succeded producing a preliminary stage of fuel and kerosene from water and carbon dioxide (CO2) by using a solar cavity-receiver reactor.
The researchers calculate that the technology could be commercialised within the next eight years. I will meet the head of the research group by the end of April on a roundtable of ASPO Switzerland. I hope I will get more details there.
The results of the research group were published in Nature http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.1197834. A short description of the project was posted on the ETH Life website: http://www.ethlife.ethz.ch/archive_a...er_reaktor_per

Wish you all a nice weekend!

PB

Take me with you. I have solved the JFK Conspiracy....time to solve the Energy Conspiracy

[Rick M]

Thanks for that PB

I was not aware of this, and although I am always wary of such supposed break-through technologies, the fact that it has been written up in Science lends it some credibility. Please keep us posted.

On a less happy note, Iraq's largest refinery was attacked this morning, which cannot be helpful:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/...71P0IM20110226

[Dayuhan]

I was not aware of this, and although I am always wary of such supposed break-through technologies, the fact that it has been written up in Science lends it some credibility. Please keep us posted.

I am skeptical as well. The wording, for one thing, is rather odd: "a preliminary stage of fuel and kerosene". You have to wonder what sort of fuel is under discussion, and what the "preliminary stage" was.

The problems, of course, will be the energy inputs the system requires and the question of whether the process is replicable on a significant scale. H20 and C02 are extremely stable molecules, which is why they are so common. It might be possible to find a way to break those molecules down and rearrange their components without an energy deficit, but reproducing that process on an economic scale is not going to be easy.

[Rick M]

Steve,
Thanks for your posting: you are certainly correct in mentioning scale. As that recent RAND report on alt-fuels for military points out, to be of wide-spread use a new technology needs to be capable of putting forth volumes & availability (ie. infrastructure) which will permit widespread adoption of it.... often not so easy.

Meanwhile, the Herzliya conference on national security was held two weeks ago in Israel.
Here is the agenda:
http://www.herzliyaconference.org/_U...AgendaE(1).pdf

Please note the Tuesday morning session (11:30) entitled "At Peak Oil: Strategic Implications..."
Brig Gen Binder covers a lot of ground and many points are understated (sometimes his English is a bit jumbled, though I think his intent is clear):
http://www.youtube.com/user/Herzliya...40/bYATgE_KsXs

Yossie Hollander also makes a number of good points.
David Hobbs from CERA states the obvious.
Brenda Shaffer sees little to worry about, thanks to natural gas.

Jim Woolsey seems all over the map: in this interview he seems to downplay PO in the first few seconds (there could be some context missing here) and then seems to discount the IEA warning about needing 4-6 Saudi Arabias within 20 years, yet he expects surging consumption in China:
http://wn.com/herzliyaconference?upl...erby=published

Woolsey's optimism re alt-fuels does not quite fit with the recent RAND study on alternative fuels for military application.
His last few minutes are spent on small talk with the interviewer, so you may want to stop around the 10th minute.

These links connect to conference videos of other familiar names re energy security: Liam Fox, Gal Luft, Patrick Clawson, etc.