The former chairman of Shell, the Lord Oxburgh, has warned that the price of oil could reach $150 a barrel, and that production could peak within 20 years. I doubt there is much argument that the price of oil will soar, having reached a record $80 in this last week, and while estimates of when "Peak Oil" will come vary considerably, it appears most likely that the event will occur within about 5 years. For example, the Norwegian energy provider Statoil have forecast it to arrive somewhere within the period 2010 - 2015, so it could be just a couple of years away.
Lord Oxburgh has accused the industry of having its "head in the sand" over the depletion of world oil supplies, and stated: "We may be sleepwalking into a problem which is actually going to be very serious and it may be too late to do anything about it by the time we are fully aware." Too true, and personally it is precisely this aspect of restricted timescale that bothers me, in the sense that any alternatives need to be not just "promising" or "at the research stage" but up and running within 10 years at the maximum and I wonder if that is possible. For example, if we were serious about implementing renewables, of all kinds, then we should have been doing so about 20 years ago, and even if these can yet be installed on the grand scale, and in the nick of time, they do not help us necessarily with the most pressing problem of oil depletion, which is how to keep transportation running.
Some think this might be done by switching over to vehicles powered by hydrogen fuel cells, but again, the vast and necessary infrastructure needs to be up and running within 10 years, and since there has been no such action on a serious scale, I presume that the governments of the world do not believe this is the answer. There is also the issue of platinum (essential for fuel-cells that "burn" hydrogen), which is such a rare metal that even if current world production of it were doubled, we could still not put more than 3 million fuel-cell "cars" on the road annually, meaning that in 15 years time we would have matched less than about 7% of the current world road fleet in the form of "hydrogen cars", by when it is anybody's guess how many "oil-powered" cars will be left. We are facing a transportation crunch.
As Lord Oxburgh points out correctly, "We can probably go on extracting oil from the ground for a very long time, but it is going to get very expensive indeed. And once you see oil prices in excess of $100 or $150 a barrel, the alternatives simply become more attractive on price grounds if on no others." I take some point of issue here, however, because while it is true that we can almost certainly continue to extract oil for decades to come, we cannot do so to match the current level of demand, which is why oil will inevitably become so expensive.
By the time economics have forced the price to say $150 a barrel, we will be deeply inside a resource crisis, and we need to implement "alternatives", if we can, well before it is simply a matter of price that forces our hand. My fear is we have left it too late to make a smooth transition, and even if such long-term projects as HiPER (laser fusion) etc. will be viable in three decades time, there remains an uncertain and rocky path from now to then, and even these "limitless" supplies of energy will be hard pushed to match the power drawn currently by transportation and all else, and at a time when energy has run desperately short to run the then existing world, let alone fulfill extra demands in building new infrastructures. Oil is also the world's major chemical raw material for all manufacturing processes, and so it is not just the lack of it to put into fuel tanks that will smite civilization.
We are sometimes called the "plastic" society, and indeed all synthetic materials including plastic are made ultimately from oil. At $150 a barrel or who knows how much, clearly the cost of everything we have learned to take for granted will soar inexorably, while accordingly their supplies will fall with an equal relentlessness. In short, global economic growth will find its days numbered and in the absence of such effortless and borrowed abundance, the global village will contract into localised economies. The destination is inevitable, and the best we can do is cushion the ride there, if indeed we can.
Related Reading.
"Oil industry 'sleepwalking into crisis'", By David Strahan and Andrew Murray-Watson, The Independent on Sunday: http://news.independent.co.uk/business/news/artcile2966842.ece
Monday, September 17, 2007
Saturday, September 15, 2007
Arctic Ice Melting faster than Global Warming Models Predict.
During this summer of torrential rain in the UK, the Arctic ice has melted at a rate hitherto unknown, and the amounts of sea-ice in the Arctic ocean are at a record low, at least for the duration of accurate measurements of it, which began about 30 years ago. To lend a sense of scale to the process, it is reported that an area "almost twice as big as the UK" was lost in the past week alone.
Many lost their lives trying to navigate the putative course of the Northwest passage across the top of Canada, including the two-ship ("The Terror" and "The Erebus") expedition of Sir John Franklin in 1845. Traces of the expedition have been found, including notes that indicate that the ships became ice-locked in 1846 near King William island, about half way through the passage, and were unable to extricate themselves, with the loss of 129 lives. Franklin himself died in 1847 and the last of the party died in 1848. However, so much ice has been lost during this summer the passage is presently fully navigable, and observers believe that the Northeast passage along the Arctic coast of Russia could become so later this month.
The importance of the Northwest passage was to provide a sailing link between Europe and Asia, avoiding the necessity to sail around the horn of Africa. I muse slightly, that in an era of higher global temperatures but restricted fuel supplies, such a trade-route could come into its own to ferry manufactured goods from the Far East to Europe, and even to North America, if it becomes more efficient to bring cargo to the west coast via the passage rather to to the East coast across the Pacific Ocean, and then to transport goods across the continent. Perhaps both routes will be used, depending on the closeness to the coast of their final inland destination?
Will we use sailing ships once more too, depending on the power of the wind rather than fossil fuels, although the volume of cargo that could be so borne would be implicitly reduced, and to essentials only. It may be that inland transportation will become a greater problem than oceanic travel, in the absence of liquid fuels, meaning that the coastal regions will flourish, along the lines of the original port-cities like London and Liverpool, existing almost separate from an agrarian hinterland. But those "cities" will still need to be fed, and possibly beyond the capacity of local farms, perhaps imposing a restriction on their actual level of growth.
These thoughts aside, why is the Arctic ice retreating to fast? The Arctic has lost around one third of the ice it had when detailed satellite measurements began thirty years ago, and the rate of its depletion has accelerated abruptly since 2002. Dr Mark Serreze, at Colorado University (where the US National Snow and Ice Data Center is), said: "If you asked me a couple of years ago when the Arctic could lose all of its ice then I would have said 2100, or 2070 maybe. But now I think that 2030 is a reasonable estimate. It seems the Arctic is going to be a very different place within our lifetimes, and certainly within our children's lifetimes." It appears therefore, that climate models are not able to account for the phenomenon, and perhaps there is another factor involved which is not encoded into the various algorithms, whatever that might be.
The latest measurements show that the area of remaining sea-ice is 4.4 million square kilometres. The previous record low was 5.3 million km^2 in September 2005, as compared with an average of 7.7 million km^2 between 1979 and 2000. The sea-ice usually melts in the Arctic summer and freezes once more during the winter; however Dr Serreze thinks this year that will be difficult, noting that: "This summer we've got all this open water and added heat going into the ocean. That is going to make it much harder for the ice to grow back.
Changes in wind and ocean circulation patterns can help reduce the amount of sea-ice but Dr Serreze said the main culprit is man-made global warming, commenting: "The rules are starting to change and what's changing the rules is the input of greenhouse gases." So why don't the models predict what is happening, and might there not be an additional forcing factor, perhaps a flow of warmer water from somewhere, as might explain the unexpectedly rapid melting of the Larsen-B Shelf in Antarctica?
I leave these matters to the experts and their calculations, but await their results in a combination of concern and interest.
Related Reading.
(1) "Loss of Arctic ice leaves experts stunned," By David Adam, Guardian Unlimited: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2007/sep/04/climatechange
(2) www.usatoday.com/weather/resources/coldscience/
2004-05-26-peninsular-conf_x.htm
Many lost their lives trying to navigate the putative course of the Northwest passage across the top of Canada, including the two-ship ("The Terror" and "The Erebus") expedition of Sir John Franklin in 1845. Traces of the expedition have been found, including notes that indicate that the ships became ice-locked in 1846 near King William island, about half way through the passage, and were unable to extricate themselves, with the loss of 129 lives. Franklin himself died in 1847 and the last of the party died in 1848. However, so much ice has been lost during this summer the passage is presently fully navigable, and observers believe that the Northeast passage along the Arctic coast of Russia could become so later this month.
The importance of the Northwest passage was to provide a sailing link between Europe and Asia, avoiding the necessity to sail around the horn of Africa. I muse slightly, that in an era of higher global temperatures but restricted fuel supplies, such a trade-route could come into its own to ferry manufactured goods from the Far East to Europe, and even to North America, if it becomes more efficient to bring cargo to the west coast via the passage rather to to the East coast across the Pacific Ocean, and then to transport goods across the continent. Perhaps both routes will be used, depending on the closeness to the coast of their final inland destination?
Will we use sailing ships once more too, depending on the power of the wind rather than fossil fuels, although the volume of cargo that could be so borne would be implicitly reduced, and to essentials only. It may be that inland transportation will become a greater problem than oceanic travel, in the absence of liquid fuels, meaning that the coastal regions will flourish, along the lines of the original port-cities like London and Liverpool, existing almost separate from an agrarian hinterland. But those "cities" will still need to be fed, and possibly beyond the capacity of local farms, perhaps imposing a restriction on their actual level of growth.
These thoughts aside, why is the Arctic ice retreating to fast? The Arctic has lost around one third of the ice it had when detailed satellite measurements began thirty years ago, and the rate of its depletion has accelerated abruptly since 2002. Dr Mark Serreze, at Colorado University (where the US National Snow and Ice Data Center is), said: "If you asked me a couple of years ago when the Arctic could lose all of its ice then I would have said 2100, or 2070 maybe. But now I think that 2030 is a reasonable estimate. It seems the Arctic is going to be a very different place within our lifetimes, and certainly within our children's lifetimes." It appears therefore, that climate models are not able to account for the phenomenon, and perhaps there is another factor involved which is not encoded into the various algorithms, whatever that might be.
The latest measurements show that the area of remaining sea-ice is 4.4 million square kilometres. The previous record low was 5.3 million km^2 in September 2005, as compared with an average of 7.7 million km^2 between 1979 and 2000. The sea-ice usually melts in the Arctic summer and freezes once more during the winter; however Dr Serreze thinks this year that will be difficult, noting that: "This summer we've got all this open water and added heat going into the ocean. That is going to make it much harder for the ice to grow back.
Changes in wind and ocean circulation patterns can help reduce the amount of sea-ice but Dr Serreze said the main culprit is man-made global warming, commenting: "The rules are starting to change and what's changing the rules is the input of greenhouse gases." So why don't the models predict what is happening, and might there not be an additional forcing factor, perhaps a flow of warmer water from somewhere, as might explain the unexpectedly rapid melting of the Larsen-B Shelf in Antarctica?
I leave these matters to the experts and their calculations, but await their results in a combination of concern and interest.
Related Reading.
(1) "Loss of Arctic ice leaves experts stunned," By David Adam, Guardian Unlimited: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2007/sep/04/climatechange
(2) www.usatoday.com/weather/resources/coldscience/
2004-05-26-peninsular-conf_x.htm
Wednesday, September 12, 2007
Shell Consider Nuclear-Powered Tar Sands.
The Canadian Athabasca tar sands (oil sands) contain the makings of an enormous reserve of oil, which the Alberta government estimates at 174 billion barrels that are economically recoverable (the second largest "oil reserves" after Saudi Arabia), or some 10% of the total of the 1,700 - 2,500 billion barrels worth there is thought to be in total. This is not in fact oil per se, but bitumen which needs to be recovered from the mineral solid ("sand"), and then refined into a material that is light enough to be used as a fuel. The actual sand is a mixture of sand or clay, water and bitumen, and the process requires an enormous amount of energy, usually provided in the form of natural gas, and water, the latter drawn from the Athabasca river.
The natural gas is used both to provide heat to form steam to extract the bitumen, and also as a hydrogen source to refine-up the product into oil suitable as a fuel. The wikipedia site on tar sands, (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athabasca_Tar_Sands) reckons that it takes up to 1,200 cu feet of gas to produce one barrel of oil, which is the equivalent of 6,000 cu feet of gas in terms of it's energy. So a simple division would suggest an EROEI of 5. However, a figure of 1.5 is often quoted, due presumably to the need to take account of the energy used in the mining, processing and recovery, etc. Hence if you add-in the whole lot the figure might well fall to 1.5, which many think is not enough to make the process viable. However the EROEIs quoted (usually with no break-down of a calculation given to explain them), that I have seen, vary from about 5 down to 1.5, but I think it depends on exactly what is factored-in.
A supply of Canadian gas that is expected to dwindle (as it will elsewhere in the world), against a rising requirement for it, if the amount of tar sands oil production is expected to increase by five times over the next 20 years, might be offset if an alternative source of heat could be provided with which to generate the steam. I stress that since more gas is used to supply hydrogen with which to "reform" the bitumen into "oil" for fuel than is used for steam generation, the demand on natural gas is likely to remain enormous and to grow. One alternative being considered is to gasify the bitumen into syn-gas ( a mixture of H2 + CO), but this is an energy demanding process. Hence if an alternative energy source is available, both problems are in principle addressed.
To this end, Canadian companies AECL and Energy Alberta have proposed the construction of a nuclear reactor near the sites of the huge Athabasca tar sands development, controlled by Shell, and while it has not been stated explicitly that it is Shell who are the "large company" that will take 70% of the electricity that it generates, a spokeswoman from Shell has confirmed that the company is considering a range of alternatives, including nuclear. The reactor is estimated to cost C$6 billion (£2.8 billion).
Not everyone is an enthusiast of the proposal, however, including Walt Patterson, associate fellow at think-tank Chatham House who said: "Extracting oil from tar scares the pants off me. The whole idea is fundamentally perverse in the context of the present environmental situation. To then power it with nuclear, it seems the worst of all worlds."
Shell and its partner companies in Athabasca presently produce 155,000 barrels of oil per day from the tar sands there, and the proposed increase in output by five times over the next 20 years would require an additional 1,000 MW of generating capacity - i.e. about one nuclear reactor's worth!
It is necessary to dig about 4 tonnes of raw material out of the ground to make one barrel of oil, and something like 4 barrels of water is needed too. Hence because it takes resources to extract resources, it may well be that the depletion of natural gas and a water supply that is unable to meet demand, especially if the environmental clean-up factors are included as it is a rather dirty process overall, will hit the viability of the tar sands "oil fields" before the low EROEI does.
Related Reading.
(1)"Shell could take nuclear option to mine oil from Canadian tar sands," By Tim Webb: http://news.independent.co.uk/business/news/article2944305.ece
(2) en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athabasca_Tar_Sands
The natural gas is used both to provide heat to form steam to extract the bitumen, and also as a hydrogen source to refine-up the product into oil suitable as a fuel. The wikipedia site on tar sands, (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athabasca_Tar_Sands) reckons that it takes up to 1,200 cu feet of gas to produce one barrel of oil, which is the equivalent of 6,000 cu feet of gas in terms of it's energy. So a simple division would suggest an EROEI of 5. However, a figure of 1.5 is often quoted, due presumably to the need to take account of the energy used in the mining, processing and recovery, etc. Hence if you add-in the whole lot the figure might well fall to 1.5, which many think is not enough to make the process viable. However the EROEIs quoted (usually with no break-down of a calculation given to explain them), that I have seen, vary from about 5 down to 1.5, but I think it depends on exactly what is factored-in.
A supply of Canadian gas that is expected to dwindle (as it will elsewhere in the world), against a rising requirement for it, if the amount of tar sands oil production is expected to increase by five times over the next 20 years, might be offset if an alternative source of heat could be provided with which to generate the steam. I stress that since more gas is used to supply hydrogen with which to "reform" the bitumen into "oil" for fuel than is used for steam generation, the demand on natural gas is likely to remain enormous and to grow. One alternative being considered is to gasify the bitumen into syn-gas ( a mixture of H2 + CO), but this is an energy demanding process. Hence if an alternative energy source is available, both problems are in principle addressed.
To this end, Canadian companies AECL and Energy Alberta have proposed the construction of a nuclear reactor near the sites of the huge Athabasca tar sands development, controlled by Shell, and while it has not been stated explicitly that it is Shell who are the "large company" that will take 70% of the electricity that it generates, a spokeswoman from Shell has confirmed that the company is considering a range of alternatives, including nuclear. The reactor is estimated to cost C$6 billion (£2.8 billion).
Not everyone is an enthusiast of the proposal, however, including Walt Patterson, associate fellow at think-tank Chatham House who said: "Extracting oil from tar scares the pants off me. The whole idea is fundamentally perverse in the context of the present environmental situation. To then power it with nuclear, it seems the worst of all worlds."
Shell and its partner companies in Athabasca presently produce 155,000 barrels of oil per day from the tar sands there, and the proposed increase in output by five times over the next 20 years would require an additional 1,000 MW of generating capacity - i.e. about one nuclear reactor's worth!
It is necessary to dig about 4 tonnes of raw material out of the ground to make one barrel of oil, and something like 4 barrels of water is needed too. Hence because it takes resources to extract resources, it may well be that the depletion of natural gas and a water supply that is unable to meet demand, especially if the environmental clean-up factors are included as it is a rather dirty process overall, will hit the viability of the tar sands "oil fields" before the low EROEI does.
Related Reading.
(1)"Shell could take nuclear option to mine oil from Canadian tar sands," By Tim Webb: http://news.independent.co.uk/business/news/article2944305.ece
(2) en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athabasca_Tar_Sands
Monday, September 10, 2007
Oil Peak by 2010?
The Norwegian energy provider Statoil has apparently named the time for the peak of oil production in the OECD (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development) countries as 2010 - 2015, which leaves the world increasingly reliant on the OPEC group and Russia to provide crude oil from petroleum. However, I thought that the peak for world oil production was also believed to arrive at around this date, although there is much debate over this issue. Statoil are now after a share of the Canadian oil sands and have paid $2.2 billion for the North American Oil Sands Corp., as part of its intention to develop its largest non-Norwegian oil-project. Statoil is based in Oslo and is expected to finalise a merger with Norsk Hydro on October the 1st; it is also among the 12 major oil companies and operates in 35 different countries.
Both the UK and Norway have a share of the North Sea fields of oil and gas, and which are maturing (i.e. running on the down-side of Hubbert's Peak with an inexorable fall in production in the coming years). Most oil-companies are hesitant to voice their views on when this might come but Statoil thinks that anywhere between 2010 and 2015 is the most likely scenario; so it could be within a couple of years or seven years at a maximum, neither limit allowing much time to adapt.
Other than obtaining more oil from the OPEC countries (mostly based in the Middle East), Russia, Venezuela and some production in the far East, the adoption of non-conventional sources of oil is seen as an important means for taking-up this slack in production... hence Statoil's interest in the Canadian tar sands. Using steam-assisted gravity methods, it is thought that the first oil will be produced in 2010, and that production will be ramped-up to 200,000 barrels a day by 2020.
Doubtless there will be more mergers to appear on the international face of oil supply, but I am reminded that depending on just how much oil the Middle East (especially Saudi), Russia and Venezuela can keep pumping out, and how much "alternative" oil can be made, the world faces a transportation crunch in short order, and a massive hiking-up of prices in general, since there is really nothing that does not depend on oil either as a fuel or as a raw chemical feedstock for manufacture, including this keyboard I am typing to you on.
Related Reading.
"Statoil sees OECD peak," Claudia Cattaneo, canada.com: http://www.canada.com/components
Both the UK and Norway have a share of the North Sea fields of oil and gas, and which are maturing (i.e. running on the down-side of Hubbert's Peak with an inexorable fall in production in the coming years). Most oil-companies are hesitant to voice their views on when this might come but Statoil thinks that anywhere between 2010 and 2015 is the most likely scenario; so it could be within a couple of years or seven years at a maximum, neither limit allowing much time to adapt.
Other than obtaining more oil from the OPEC countries (mostly based in the Middle East), Russia, Venezuela and some production in the far East, the adoption of non-conventional sources of oil is seen as an important means for taking-up this slack in production... hence Statoil's interest in the Canadian tar sands. Using steam-assisted gravity methods, it is thought that the first oil will be produced in 2010, and that production will be ramped-up to 200,000 barrels a day by 2020.
Doubtless there will be more mergers to appear on the international face of oil supply, but I am reminded that depending on just how much oil the Middle East (especially Saudi), Russia and Venezuela can keep pumping out, and how much "alternative" oil can be made, the world faces a transportation crunch in short order, and a massive hiking-up of prices in general, since there is really nothing that does not depend on oil either as a fuel or as a raw chemical feedstock for manufacture, including this keyboard I am typing to you on.
Related Reading.
"Statoil sees OECD peak," Claudia Cattaneo, canada.com: http://www.canada.com/components
Thursday, September 06, 2007
Laser Fusion Project gets Go-Ahead.
A British-led team of researchers intend to use mighty lasers to promote nuclear fusion, which some think will provide us with effectively limitless energy in the face of the looming world energy crisis. The project, known as HiPER, will be instigated in the UK, which aims to use such intense lasers to create the temperatures millions of degrees required for hydrogen (tritium and deuterium) nuclei to fuse, releasing more energy it is intended in the process than is required to power the lasers. This is currently a problem with fusion, but scientists believe that by using a laser of petawatt power (10,000 times the output of the UK national grid) in very short duration pulses, and if the laser can fire repeatedly on a fraction of a second timescale, it should be possible to create a sustainable source of energy that could be drawn-off to produce electricity.
The practicalities have been evaluated by a panel of European experts, who have approved the project. This is, in effect, a green-light for the seven year project which will cost around £500 million ($1 billion). Hiper is a development of work done in the US, and it is thought that it could provide the means for generating electricity within 20 years. When deuterium and tritium nuclei fuse a helium nucleus is formed and large amounts of energy are released. Deuterium can be extracted from seawater and tritium is produced within the reactor itself. To produce the high temperatures (above 40 million degrees) required to overcome the electrostatic repulsion between the positively charged nuclei so that they can fuse requires a lot of energy, and the balance of output to input must favour the former.
Magnetic confinement is required to hold the high temperature plasma together, since all materials known on Earth would simply be vapourised in contact with it. The strategy is that a pulsed laser with a power of one petawatt (one million billion watts) is fired at a fuel pellet just 2 millimetres in diameter. An enormous pressure is generated that squashes the pellet down to a width of just a few microns (thousands of a millimetre).
Speaking from the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, Professor Mike Dunne said, "To put that into perspective, the laser is 10,000 times the power of the entire UK national grid. And then you're going to focus that down onto a spot that's 10 to 100 times smaller than the width of a human hair. The pressure is equivalent to 10 Nimitz class aircraft carriers sitting on your thumb. Some pretty crazy things are going to happen, and that's what we're about."
I'm sure he's right, but is the technology really going to arrive in time to circumvent an energy crisis that will arrive within 10 - 20 years? I don't think we should place all our bets on it just yet, and the dearth of energy to power the world's transportation network is not obviously cured by HiPER, or the analogous ETIR fusion programme either, which is thought will not produce power commercially for another 60 years.
Related Reading.
"Green light for fusion project," By Mark Henderson, Timesonline, September 3, 2007: http://ww.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/science/article2373748
The practicalities have been evaluated by a panel of European experts, who have approved the project. This is, in effect, a green-light for the seven year project which will cost around £500 million ($1 billion). Hiper is a development of work done in the US, and it is thought that it could provide the means for generating electricity within 20 years. When deuterium and tritium nuclei fuse a helium nucleus is formed and large amounts of energy are released. Deuterium can be extracted from seawater and tritium is produced within the reactor itself. To produce the high temperatures (above 40 million degrees) required to overcome the electrostatic repulsion between the positively charged nuclei so that they can fuse requires a lot of energy, and the balance of output to input must favour the former.
Magnetic confinement is required to hold the high temperature plasma together, since all materials known on Earth would simply be vapourised in contact with it. The strategy is that a pulsed laser with a power of one petawatt (one million billion watts) is fired at a fuel pellet just 2 millimetres in diameter. An enormous pressure is generated that squashes the pellet down to a width of just a few microns (thousands of a millimetre).
Speaking from the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, Professor Mike Dunne said, "To put that into perspective, the laser is 10,000 times the power of the entire UK national grid. And then you're going to focus that down onto a spot that's 10 to 100 times smaller than the width of a human hair. The pressure is equivalent to 10 Nimitz class aircraft carriers sitting on your thumb. Some pretty crazy things are going to happen, and that's what we're about."
I'm sure he's right, but is the technology really going to arrive in time to circumvent an energy crisis that will arrive within 10 - 20 years? I don't think we should place all our bets on it just yet, and the dearth of energy to power the world's transportation network is not obviously cured by HiPER, or the analogous ETIR fusion programme either, which is thought will not produce power commercially for another 60 years.
Related Reading.
"Green light for fusion project," By Mark Henderson, Timesonline, September 3, 2007: http://ww.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/science/article2373748
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