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these give %s on sector consumption of oil
https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/index.cfm?page=oil_use
and contribution of hydraulic fracturing to production
https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=26112
w/ regard to other comments:
The oil and gas industry succeeds in spite of itself. It is an industry full of very smart people that is very slow to innovate and adopt new technology. Much of that is due to risk aversion. Some is due to the fact that regardless of how nifty some technology is, the implementation will always involve some Neanderthal who knows how to do something one way and any deviation from that way usually ends up training new Neanderthals. Some of the Neanderthals r in the field and some r in the supply chain or some other supporting role (and some run the company).
Michael Dell was inadvertently a great contributor to the oil industry cuz he’s the guy that invented ‘connect the purple plug to the purple hole and green to green’. But regardless of how brain dead a system is designed there will always b Neanderthals that think putting bricks into a mud sampling system or leaving electronics in a container in the jungle for 2 months won’t hurt anything (or that it will still b there).
Automation is the obvious solution to many of the problems and nowlurking has alluded to that previously. But that demonstrates my prior point. Russia developed many automated drilling technologies >30 yrs ago and the industry is still working on making those sorts of innovations routine.
Oilfield service companies would benefit greatly by following Amazon’s business model but somehow that concept has escaped them and they still have armies of knuckle-draggers writing stuff on whiteboards and manually transferring information from paper to excel worksheets. And that invariably results in wrong stuff getting delivered or no stuff getting delivered while very expensive people and equipment sit around for 3-4 days. That’s a management and political problem. Much of the business is conducted in socialist countries and countries where making jobs and work is more important than being efficient. The problem is compounded because many of those people eventually end up in the US or Canada and they continue to operate as if they were in the 3rd world (or France, Italy, etc).
And just to be more equitable. Poor management isn’t just a multinational problem. When I worked for CHK one of the 1st things I noticed was a map of their lease holdings which included a huge amount of acreage around the finger lakes in NY. As a kid I spent a lot of time there so I remembered the rocks and now as a geologist I knew that area was worthless wrt to natural gas production but they had been operating on the basis of ‘lease everything and sort out the chaff later’. That approach had also obviously been used in hiring many of the senior management and technical staff.
“Big data” is now a big thing in the oil industry. The logic is that they have more data than they have been able to make use of and that the human processors may have missed connections between data that algorithms may be able to find. The logic is somewhat puzzling - especially if you’ve been exposed to the sophistication of their supply chain software and the whiteboard thing. I find SLB's approach to this particularly humorous because they opened a Big Data center in the Bay Area in the midst of the current market collapse 3 yrs after they closed a similar facility in the same place. Competing with Google, Apple, etc for competent personnel on oilfield salaries in a depressed market seems like a bad conceptual model.
So the bottom line is that when it comes to investing in the o&g business if u have access to investment in non-publicly traded companies, I’d look around the edges. Picks, shovels and blue jeans rather than mining the gold. Some of the best services and technologies are developed by small private companies that fill a niche. “IsoTubes” is an example. Absolutely brain dead yet brilliant innovation for systematically collecting and delivering oilfield fluid samples to analytical labs. Because it was simple, uniform, and met shipping regs it took over that part of the market and became quite profitable. Weatherford eventually bought the company. I don’t know what market share is now or whether it contributes positive income to Weatherford but Weatherford isn’t doing well and I know that SLB’s effort to usurp the IsoTube business never left the launch pad and if it had, it would’ve failed because of their inefficiencies (Amazon would’ve run that business beautifully).
With the exception of CoreLabs, the oilfield analytical chemistry business is a loser but providing the means of getting samples from the well to the lab is a great business. CoreLabs is effectively the McDonalds of the oil and gas industry’s analytical chemistry business. Weatherford’s is Dairy Queen, SLB’s is Del Taco and CHK’s version is the local food truck.
Another example related to hydraulic fracturing involves pumps. Propping fractures involves putting sand into the fractures and service companies somehow thought that putting sand thru pumps was a good idea. Not surprisingly pumps don’t like sand. Since I do chemistry I had a solution that involved chemistry but a private company had a better mechanical solution. SLB eventually bought them but I still don’t think that solution has become mainstream and I’d bet body parts that patents won’t protect it from being copied everywhere.
Some folks may point out that the oil and gas industry has been a victim of its own success in adopting technology, e.g. hydraulic fracturing. However, I see that as another supporting data point for my more critical view. George Mitchell's company was on the verge of bankruptcy when they tried hydraulic fracturing out of desperation. They had nothing more to lose on technology that had been partly developed outside the industry many years before (1940s). It wasnt until after 2006 that hydraulic fracturing became routine.
The only part of your comments I’d argue with is:
“of all our barrels of oil used, only 30% is used for ICEs.”
In the US, I think that % should be inverted. Gasoline is about 30% of all energy consumed in US but it’s close to 50% of petroleum consumption. Diesel pushes the number closer to 70%.
Regarding cobalt mining in Africa: the environmental damage is probably not the ugliest aspect. The people, including children, that r doing the ‘illegal’ mining, live and work under horrid conditions. Same thing happens in South America. Again, there r plenty of other sources of cobalt but the lack of effective environmental and labor laws contribute to Africa being the cheapest source - although their deposits are also enormous and frequently easy to access.
I didn’t say anything was wrong with solar. I was just pointing out that installed capacity and amount of investment don’t necessarily mean that the installed units are producing electricity profitability. I’ve made plenty of investments that didn’t make money. Many investors in solar have followed the same path - including unwitting tax payers.
“the world invested more in solar power than it did in any other energy technology and installed more new solar capacity than all other energy sources combined, including fossil fuels.”
That’s not necessarily a good thing.
Your impression is correct. The ‘rare’ in rare earths is a misnomer. Potentially economic lanthanide metal deposits are widely distributed around the globe and could be extracted from ores of other metals.
China has an ‘advantage’ in very low labor costs and near zero environmental and worker safety overhead. Their lanthanide ore deposits are actually low grade.
The Mountain Pass deposit in California referred to by Titan is one of the highest grade lanthanide deposits on earth but it is in California and consequently Molycorp’s project was doomed from the start and Molycorp is once again bankrupt.
The Marcellus and Point Pleasant in eastern Ohio, western PA are closer to being true shales in that the rock is mostly clay (which is a family of minerals).
The reservoirs in the Permian and its sub-basins r a mixed bag of different rock types that r really anything from dirty limestones, to silt stones, to sandstones.
The terms shale (with or without oil or gas appended to it) and unconventional have become effectively meaningless. Once upon a time they shared the characteristic of referring to rocks with low permeability but that’s not even necessarily true anymore.
It’s called the East African Rift (valley or system). This is something that’s been recognized since plate tectonics was recognized which happened almost 50 yrs ago. Not a new discovery.
Nobody has significantly impeded hydraulic fracturing in the US and I think it’s safe to say that US production would be >50% lower without. Oil prices would b much higher if hydraulic fracturing was not done
When u say reserves, u should keep in mind that there r different types of reserves. Argentina has a very large ‘reserve’ of potentially productive natural gas and oil, however, it’s Argentina which imho is not much better than Russia when it comes to foreign capital investment risk.
VZ is the poster child of huge oil reserves that are less than worthless
Darwinism at work. Sounds like the family should shut up and let their lawyer do any talking
As long as there’s power to run the equipment, works great. The miracles of 19th century thermodynamics.
The problem might not have directly been the iron in the water. An increase in iron may have contributed to a ‘bloom’ of deleterious microbes in the water. Sounds like iron probably wasn’t a limiting nutrient for the local water microbes but in places where it is, a little added iron is a really good ‘fertilizer’. Look up “iron fertilization” in Wikipedia
$2k/human doesn’t seem to b very impressive
Yeah, aware of bottlenecks and windmill locations (in West Texas they seem to coexist with gigantic cotton fields).
I was talking about state politicians and hypsters finessing relative numbers for electrical power generated from non-hydrocarbon by limiting the hydrocarbon based generation stations in their states but not counting in their generation statistics those sources they used but are located in other states.
Sorry for my own awkward grammar.
most of the article isn’t as bad as the part u copied.
One of the things I’m left curious about is: “do the regulations in states mandating particular sources of electricity apply only to generation within that state’s borders?”
I c lots of windmills on the TX side of the NM/TX border but lots of gas separating plants and gas fired electric plants on the NM side.
I suspect this is similar to what CA did in 1970s and 80s when they were happy to take electricity produced from coal but the plants had to be in Utah or Nevada. Similarly MA gets a good fraction of its electricity from Canadian sources that many liberal folks wouldn’t count as renewable
The numbers can look much better to some political constituencies when the full truth isn’t divulged
And as happens with such things it seems to have already been relegated to the dustbin
Note the signs in your link all have 2006 dates
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eliica
Just to put that in perspective: world natural gas consumption is in the neighborhood of 150 trillion ft^3/yr and China’s is about 2 tcf/yr.
Agreed. W Russia there’s no shortage of ‘slow learners’
“Could more offshore drilling lower gas prices .25?”
Only if oil companies decided to become charitable organizations and took over the US Treasury Dept
3rd hand but I heard that at least 1 company in the Permian says that they r comfortable drilling wells at anything over $35/bbl
same guy told me that there were 5k drilled but uncompleted wells in the Permian which seems a bit exaggerated but I do see a lot more traffic related to completions than drilling and it’s been steadily increasing over past few months
on the flip side, activity in Marcellus/Utica/Pt Pleasant still seems depressed
“Between 2001 and 2014, the cost of electricity in Colorado has shot up 67 percent, or double the rate of inflation, despite flat consumption and falling fuel costs. Xcel has continued to profit in that period and environmental groups have gotten what they wanted. Ratepayers have been hit with electricity cost increases far beyond income gains, which suggests a planning and procurement process that isn’t protecting their interests, argues the Independence Institute, a libertarian group.”
Denver Post sept 3 2017, updated Jan 11 2018
Don’t know what Texas may have done to offset costs of wind but in Colorado it shouldn’t be surprising that renovating 40+ yr old coal plants to meet current state emissions rules might not b cost effective - especially since most of those plants were already slated to b closed in 2020s
Of course the costs associated with Colorado’s Clean Air Jobs Act would have nothing to do with that or the increase in electricity rates that far outstrip inflation since it was passed
as Dew hinted at, it might b worth $2T to him but is it worth $2T to anybody else? In a country where princes are held for ransom, as opposed to being tried for crimes, becuz they siphoned off money, do u think there will b effective safeguards for western investors ?
It’s disingenuous to state that is SLB’s reply to trump although opening offshore US areas to exploration is inconsequential.
SLB is becoming an IT company. That’s what they mean by asset light. Ashok Belani has convinced Kipsgaard that ‘big data’ and information processing is where they will make money in the future yet this is a company with different procurement systems on different continents and between Canada and the US that can’t talk to each other. Eclipse is a hodgepodge of software inherited from the nuclear waste industry circa 1980.
and the comment “... the only product line that does not meet our return expectations going forward...” is a flagrant lie
Uranium is just another metal that is not in short supply. Metals like uranium, rare earths, lithium and copper are not mined in the US but r mined in s-hole countries and consequently the companies that do mine these metals either tend to b shady or must deal with shady people. That frequently means the common stock investor in those companies ends up w nada.
I passed a 1938 Rolls Royce on the interstate recently. When’s the last time anyone saw a drivable electric car from the early 1900s (there were plenty). Me things the stat u cited was a bit like an economic projection from Paul Krugman
Jbog pointed out long ago that much of that 62% comes from mom & pop consumption rather than large plants. Mom & pop can obtain and store coal more easily than gas unless the govmint comes along and disrupts the supply chain. Then everyone gets cold
117 years of hydrocarbon supremacy?
If u actually look at the automobile market 115 years ago, it had a very healthy percentage of electric and even steam vehicle manufacturers. Gasoline/diesel vehicles emerged as winners for good reasons - none of which involved government interference in their interest
“the lower to middle class as the vast majority have no savings let alone a 401K, equities, etc.”
Maybe u should advocate raising cigarette taxes
Tony Seba has a BS in computer science and a MBA. He’s mostly a promoter of his self interests. Not the best authority for those claims and I doubt you would accept anecdotal evidence in a clinical trial of a drug; likewise not particularly useful in this case
Merck kga now owns millipore which is now milliporesigma. Definitely gdtw but not for desalination on mass scale.
I’d b happy if jbog’s water visions transpired but I don’t see it happening
Opec has misjudged the ability of US producers to survive although I’m not sure what is being called shale these days. Drilling is booming in the Permian basin now.
What will b ironic is when folks realize that ‘mining’ the coke residue from refineries will b more economic than some of the conventional mines that some suckers will chase
Lithium is fairly easy to find and acquire, eg there r oceans full of it if the price gets high enough. Investing in mined resources is not something I’m likely to ever do.
Sort of. Mother Earth does the separating and concentration of lead commonly forming lead (and zinc) sulfide deposits and those minerals are easily separable from gangue. Not the case for cobalt. Co is almost always combined with other metals and is generally a very minor constituent in those metal ores. Mother Earth also tends to do a better job of separating lithium than it does for cobalt.
while not a perfect measure, doing what is profitable correlates with energy efficiency. In the New Yorker story, the scheme described results in a large relative increase in CO2 production versus simply not doing anything. That's one of the things i find ironic about Klaus Lackner's schemes. He claims to be a big picture guy but in the big picture, his schemes always produce an increase in CO2 versus doing nothing. As for Julio, he has ambitions on eventually being secretary of energy and god help us if that ever happens.
I have no problem with supporting research, especially cuz that's what i do, but the goal of the research shouldnt border on fraud. In the absence of replacing combustion of carbon fuels, making CO2 'ground bound' is the only way to reduce atmospheric CO2 levels and that's not what Lackner's scheme does. He does put CO2 into an intermediate solid form but then promptly decomposes it to form food grade CO2 for resale (it wouldnt make any sense to cannisterize it otherwise). There's a bunch of steps on the way to getting the CO2 into solid form which generally result in a net gain in CO2 but then to use a lot of energy to decompose the solid to produce food grade CO2 (and probably CaO for resale) produces a very large increase in CO2 production. That process requires a lot of energy. He might have a hell of a solar array or wind farm to power his furnaces rather than burning natural gas to avoid the added CO2 production in the last step but even if true, the world would be better off if that power went straight to the grid or battery storage cuz there are much more efficient ways of making food grade CO2 and if he is selling the last part as merely a temporary measure to offset costs, then he's dreaming and scamming his investors/granting agencies.
While i'm picking on Lackner, he's just one example of many. The schemes almost always involving producing a commercial product associated with the CO2 removal process and almost always use current product resale pricing for their economic evaluations. However, the schemes invariably leave out the part about how if they produced by-products or CO2-bearing product quantities necessary to make a difference in atmospheric CO2 levels, then the markets for those products would collapse and the cost offsets would evaporate.
As a parting commentary: I think many more people would be less resistant to legislative 'encouragements' to recover and dispose of CO2 from waste streams if the politicians that usually push such ideas wouldnt invariably tie the taxes, penalties or permit fees to welfare programs that have no connection to atmospheric CO2 reduction.
Julio Friedman and Klaus Lackner r experts at 1 thing - transferring tax payer dollars to their pockets. The little project cited in the article exemplifies is typical of their work
“Every day at the plant, roughly a ton of CO2 that had previously floated over Mt. Garibaldi or the Chief is converted into calcium carbonate. The pellets are subsequently heated, and the gas is forced off, to be stored in cannisters.”
This process adds an extra set of steps to what cement factories do every day and cement manufacturers r one of Lackner and Friedman’s targets as contributors to climate change. Adding extra steps generally doesn’t improve efficiency. There r good reasons why Lackner’s little projects fail (and I haven’t known any that haven’t)
Something that the world can easily live without - and had prior to 1933
No, I understood. I don't think that china will b in a position to compel the Saudis to do anything in the time frame where u or I will see it.
Or so says Carl Weinberg. Since China imports about the same amount of oil as Japan and S Korea combined I don’t think the Saudi’s r too concerned