Goldman Sachs:
Oil price may hit $200 a barrel – within six months

… and I’ve a growing feeling that $100 oil might soon seem a fond and distant memory.

“I don’t understand all the details, but the idea of hot fusion is that plasma is so hot that the atoms get naked and the chance that one neutron will hit another is very high.”

That doesn’t make sense (not an attack on you), Let me explain: Free neutrons cannot bond together, they will only join with protons. The process of fusion is joining atom nucleus with one or more protons. Attaching free nuetrons does not generate energy (this is referred to as transmutation). Joining free neutrons transmutes atoms into different isotopes and elements, but it is not fusion and it doesn’t produce energy. In some rare cases, adding neutrons results in atoms splitting (fission), which is another discussion.

To join atom nuclei in fusion the atom neclei have hit dead on center. If they are even off by just a bit no fusion is achieved. If they collide but don’t fuse, atoms convert some of their inertia, and you have to add more energy to get them back up to speed in order for another shot at fusing them. Atoms with the highest neutrons to protons are the easist to fuse, The more protons the higher the repulsive charge is pushing the atom away from each other, if the atoms aren’t colloding dead on the repulsive force pushes them away at right angles. The higher number of neutrons increases the mass of the atoms (increased inertia) but since they neutrons carry no charge then do cause the atom neclei to repeal each other.

theroxylandr wrote:

“you will be able to compute the neutron trajectory at real time and shoot them directly into one another.”

Neutrons are completely uncontrollable because they have no charge. There is no means to apply a force on them to steer them. Its impossible. Even charge fast particles are extremely difficult to control. Then there is the Heisenberg uncertainty:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncertainty_principle

Its impossible to accurately measure a particles and position and speed at the same time.

Your statements seem to me to hint at a completely different project: non-critical fission. In France, there is an ongoing project to create a melt-down safe reactor that uses an intense beam of particles to induce fission, if the beam is remove fission stops. However this isn’t a pratical solution since it has extermely low nuetron economcy (which is a whole discussion in itself).

FWIW: Discussing Fusion and future energy is a lot like discussing religion with a bunch of folks that all believe their own religon is the correct one. All I can say is that fusion isn’t workable. I’ve look at myself, and even constructed a simple electro-static confinment reactor http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusor years ago.

Yogi Says:

“I’m sorry. Sasol’s Secunda Fischer-Tropsch plant actually has a capacity of 150,000 barrels a day, not 100,000 as I stated . My bad.”

http://www.mbendi.co.za/sps2.htm

Its actually 2 plants working together to produce between 150 and 170 kpd of “hydrocarbons”, and only a fraction is liquid fuels:

1. FT produces olefines not octanes. These are long chain hydrocarbons which ranged from light hydrocarbon fluids like Naptha to heavy Parafines (waxes). The FT produces a chaotic mixure of hydrocarbons and it is impossible to come out with a mono hydrocarbon. usually FT hydrocarbons under go a serious of post refining to produce synthetic fuels (this is where it gets expensive). BTW: The only practical fuel is diesel, no gasoline. The only practical FT fuel is DME or dimethyl ether, but thats another discussion.

Most of the hydrocarbons coming out of Secunda isn’t fuel, its feedstock for petro-chemicals (Plastics, pesticides, etc). Only a small fraction, the fraction that FT produces hydrocarbons fuels, is sold as fuel. I beleve the Sasol plants also use natural gas to hydrotreat (add hydrogen) FT products to upgrade them. (ie Sasols FT plants are not 100% coal fueled).

Under absolutely ideal lab conditions use ultra pure Carbon Monoxide and hydrogen, 60% of syngas can be convert to diesel with post refining. In real world conditions it vary between 10% and 18%. Also consider that that coal feed stock has be of high quality such as hard coal “Anthracite” or low sulfur bitimous. There are only a few coal sites that contain Anthracite, most world wide coal is Lignite or SubLignite, which is loaded with contaiments which attack catalysts used in FT fuel sythetheis, rendering them useless.

2. South africa imports 2/3s of its oil. It is not energy self sufficient:
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/print/sf.html

South Africa only used FT for liquid fuels during Apartide, when their was an oil embargo against them. Note that SA, gave up, and imports its oil because it couldn’t rely on FT to meet demand.

SA is also a very poor country, where only a small amount of the population lives a western lifestyle. Yet depite FT and its larger coal reserves the standard of living and fuel shortage persist and are getting worse. The Weathly live in gated communities and electricity shortages are rampid. Sorry, but SA would be a poor example of a FT success story.

“The leading company in the commercialization of synthetic fuel is Sasol, a company based in South Africa. Sasol currently operates the world’s only commercial coal-to-liquids facility at Secunda..”

The Key phrase in this statement is “the World’s only commerical coal-to-liquids facility”. Why is there only ONE? Why not a dozen or even just two?

FWIW: I’ve been researching this for years. I’ve looked at all this stuff trying to see if their was a true workable solution to Peak Oil (ie to capitalize on PO and make a fortune). I have not found it. Unlike most people I’ve always been very interested in the details of how things work, and this gift (more like a curse) has lead me to the conclusion that there are no true replacements for Oil and gas.They are simply unreplaceable (well unless your willing to wait a few million years for the Earth to cook up another batch for us!).

The more you dig into these replacements, you find a lot of serious issues. Remember last year that Ethanol was going to replace oil? I have no doubt that FT is next on the list of stuff to try, but like ethanol, it too will be abandoned for something else. Perhaps if there is enough time, we’ll rehash the same stuff over an over Ethanol to FT, to shale, back to Ethanol or Turkey guts.

Yogi Says:
“BTW very little oil is needed to make fertilizer. Lots of natural gas is used to make hydrogen for nitrogen fertilizers via the Haber ammonia synthesis, but that hydrogen could also be made by electrolysis of water with renewable energy e.g. from wind turbines.”

1. Natural gas is also running in short supply, The price of Natural is so high that the US closed its last Fertilizer plant and today we import 100% of our fertializer. I believe I stated early that Fertilizer comes for Natural gas. In real terms we are facing Peak oil gas, an peak uranium. Some regions such as Europe are also running out of coal (the EU imports coal from the US and south africa). North America has about six or seven years left of natural gas reserves left, I don’t think we will be able to meet demand with LNG imports. NIMBY seems to be doing a good job of trying up LNG terminals in court!

FWIW: Hydrogen production using electricity is a poor solution, Hydrogen can be produced from Synethesis gas (same used by FT) usin the “water-gas shift” method, but instead of producing fuels. You could then use the hydrogen to produce anhydrous ammonia.

That said, its still not going to be enough, considering beside meeting demand for agraculture products, you also need to meet demand for fuel to run the machinery and transport food to the people, and you also have to keep them warm in the winter, provide them clean water, good sanitation, healthcare, and even keep them occupied to that don’t riot in the streets. Not to throw another wrench in the works, but also look up “future phosphate production” (used in fertializers) and “Western aquifer depletion”.

theroxylandr wrote:
” My point is only that I think there is a lot of reserves in the consumption reduction. I’m pretty sure that the world can easily cut oil consumption by 10%-20% in the next 10 years by making all kind of small adjustments in the lifestyle and production all around the globe.”

The question is, who is going to accepted forced reductions? Are you willing to do it? Maybe. What about your neighbor whose job is dependent on cheap energy, lives in a 4000 sq-ft home, drives a large SUV, as three kids to put through college. Do you think he is going like cutting back? How about the 1 Billion Indians and the 1.4 Billion Chinese that are all discovering the American Dream. Are we going to say to them, you are destined to live poor with out access western goods. I am pretty sure that most folks will demand that their gov’t take action to secure energy for themselves. I firmly believe that a cooperative agreement to cut global consumption is unachievable. At the first hint of some form of global effort to reduce consumption will lead to hording and warefare. Perhaps you were too young, but the 1973 Arab oil Embargo was anything but happy times here in the states.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:PU200611_Fig1.png

“It’s the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine”

“The leading company in the commercialization of synthetic fuel is Sasol, a company based in South Africa. Sasol currently operates the world’s only commercial coal-to-liquids facility at Secunda, with a capacity of 150,000 barrels a day [1].”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthetic_fuel

http://www.sasol.com/sasol_internet/frontend/navigation.jsp?navid=1&rootid=1

If the South Africans can manage it, it should be no problem for the “can-do” U.S. of A. right?

The production capacity of the Secunda plant is about 100,000 bpd and is economical at prices oveer $50/barrel if I remember correctly the figures quoted in a recent BBC interview. 100 plants like that ought to do it, and you have a couple of decades to build them to offset predicted oil production declines.

“They can be synthesized from coal, peat, or any organic material (including agricultural and forestry waste). Nor is oil the only possible source of enegy to run them.”

The Fischer-Tropsch process is incredibly inefficient and very expense. The US Military has been investigating CTL (Coal to Liquids). They tested fueling a B-52 with Synthetic diesel made from natural gas (easier and cheaper than coal) at a mere cost of $23 per gallon:

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2006/10/02/military_wants_a_more_fuel_efficient_humvee/?page=2
From News Article:
“Last week , a B-52 bomber made two test runs using a synthetic fuel made with natural gas. In the future, the same type of fuel will be made with coal. While officials reported no problems with the new fuel, the cost brought looks of astonishment from members of Congress at a hearing last week: $23 a gallon, almost 10 times the cost at the pump.”

One of the issue of using Coal, peat and other sources is that they are contaimented with high levels of sulfur, heavy metals that spoil the catalysts used to convert syn-gas (Hydrogen and Carbon-Monoxide) into hydrocarbon liquids and gases. The containments also cause issues for petro-chemical conversions (ie into plastics, fertializers, etc).

Another import consideration, is huge amount of infrastructure, and high maintaince costs for large scale production. For instance if we look at the Oil sands projects in Canada (far simplier than Fischer-Tropsch) they are running into expansion problems. Last year Shell reported that it would cost a mere $19 Billion in infrastructure to increase Tar sands production by 100 kbpd. Considering we need to eventually replace 10’s mbpd of conventional oil production with synthetic fuels I serious doubt it can happen no matter how much money is thrown in. Consider that as the infrastructure to convert solids to liquids, grows the costs for maintaince, supply-chain bottlenecks increase expontentially.

>>> My Apologies, but I don’t understand what you are referring to.

I don’t understand all the details, but the idea of hot fusion is that plasma is so hot that the atoms get naked and the chance that one neutron will hit another is very high.

In cold fusion the idea is that you need to hit one neutron into another like two billiard balls. The trick is that they are so small that the probability to hit is practically zero. But if you use the extra powerful computers (well faster than modern) you will be able to compute the neutron trajectory at real time and shoot them directly into one another. Don’t ask me more, I really have no clue

And I’m sure that we can consume 50% less fossil fuel 50 years from now and still live our lives, it just will be a slightly different life, closer to home if you will.

This will require more research on my part, but thanks for the quick summary of the topic.

It takes hydrocarbons to make them, but oil is not the only possible source of hydrocarbons. They can be synthesized from coal, peat, or any organic material (including agricultural and forestry waste). Nor is oil the only possible source of enegy to run them.

“Fusion will work. One of the ideas is to use enormous computing power to shoot neutrons into other neutrons, one by one.”

My Apologies, but I don’t understand what you are referring to.

We’ve been working on Fusion for over 40 years, we are no closer than we were 40 years ago. The only progress we made is 100+ Billion spend learning different ways that fusion does not work. During that period we have not increased our understand of how to make fusion work. We are simply throwing darts in the dark, hoping to get lucky. I am convinced that sustainable fusion is not practical without gravity. Also consider that fusion in not a clean source of energy. The neutrons released in D-D or D-T fusion is of much higher energy than light/heavy water fission reactors. Any material near the reactor will be transmuted (made radioactive). As I also noted in my earlier response, Fusion does address the issue with petro-chemicals.

theroxylandr wrote:
“Instead of visiting parents at Thanksgiving people will TV-conference with them on big screen, each having their own turkey”

It takes Oil to make TVs, video cameras, internet routers, and it takes energy to run all these devices.

You also need to address where all the jobs come from to support these people paying for all this stuff. You also need to consider the enoumous amount of energy that goes into feeding, providing clean water, sanitation, and shelter (heating, cooling, maintaince etc). Vasts amounts of energy are consumed addressing the needs of billions of humans. In your scenero, where do the 10’s of millions of workers displaced out of travel, auto manufacturing, etc go to find new jobs. Can you teach an old airline pilot, autoworker, to become a computer engineer? Much as we all can’t get rich if all became real estate brokers, day traders, etc, the same logic applies to adapting our economy off of cheap energy.

“Just tell me, how much oil we have if we cut our consumption by 50%?”

Another critical issue, to consider, if the West cuts consumption, the East will consume whatever amount we conserve. Do you think China and India will cut consumption. Never country accepted Kyoto limits. The world will continue to consume at the maximum production rate. Also consider 50% less consumption means 50% less economic activity.

Further more, global acceptance will lead to nations with abundant reserves cutting exports (ie hording) for future use. It likely to trigger a whole set of constrains, much less lending, rationing, shortages, and much higher unemployment. Hordering will prevent us from making a transistion.

Darth Toll wrote:
“For example, no drilling off of the California coast has been allowed, yet there are many (possible giant) reserves sitting within 50 miles of the Ca coast.

None of these will match the declines by the super giants. Much of the oil remaining on the coasts consists of multimillion barrel fields (lots of them). This makes it very costly to extract at high rates. These small fields also have short cycles, usually just producing for a few years before they become depleted. So drillers must constantly drill in new spots (and there there is the costs associated with dry holes). Some fields aren’t worth extracting since they costs to drill will exceed the cost of the oil extracted even if the price is at $200 bbl. (Remember that as the price of oil goes up, so does the cost of drilling).

The best fields in Alaska have already been taped. The North slope is already running into high water cuts. I believe the plan is for the North slope to switch to natural gas production (ie end Oil extraction and blow down the gas caps). Sure there is some oil in the ANWR and of the coast of Alaska. However, even they starting drilling today, we wouldn’t see a drop for at least ten years. FWIW: US domestic crude production has been averaging about 5.4 mbpd this year. Last time I checked it was down in November to 4.74 mbpd (probably due to maintaince somewhere)

Darth Toll wrote:
“A full-fledged energy (and resultant food) crises will allow the political concerns to subside in favor of aggressive oil discovery and production right here in the US.

I think by then it will be way too late. Reports published by the US Army Corp of Engineers and the Dept. of Energy both stated that it will take approximate 20 years to complete basic mitigation programs.

I firmly believe that our agraculture system is dependent on the Green revolution to feed our huge numbers. Much of the best farm land has been redeveloped into suburbia, commericial and industrial use. Much of the US grain production that is the back bone of food, is limited to a hand full of states, depending on rapidity depleting aquifiers and heavy use of fertializers to feed our numbers. FWIW: Today the US is a net food importer.

shahnidh wrote:
“rise of oil is possible as the OPEC is controlled the output and global demand of oil is increasing.”

OPEC is maxed out. They even removed quotas starting Nov. 1st. since all them are producting at there maximum production output. KSA, Kuwait, Iran are all declining as their super giants enter into depletion. The North side of the Ghawar in Saudia Arabia (Worlds largest field) is collapsing, and overall, the water cut is rising in all Middle east fields. Once these field water out, global production will fall by double digits. No amount of drilling globally can offset the combined loses of the super giants. FWIW: all of the Super giants peaked decades ago (in the late 70’s and early 80’s). They’ve been relying on Water injection to maintan production. But the oil columns in most of these fields are now shrinking considerably and the water cut is begining to rise significantly.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underground_coal_gasification

Advanced lithium-ion batteries should also make plug-in hybrids cost effective in the next decade or so.

BTW very little oil is needed to make fertilizer. Lots of natural gas is used to make hydrogen for nitrogen fertilizers via the Haber ammonia synthesis, but that hydrogen could also be made by electrolysis of water with renewable energy e.g. from wind turbines.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haber_process

rise of oil is possible as the OPEC is controlled the output and global demand of oil is increasing.

But think…will the US allowed OPEC to rise the prices? Oil is one of the most need of US. I think US have power to control the prices as it has the nuclear power. However this is an unrealistic matter.

But if we look into the another part, look into your buying power. All currencies other than Dollar is now being cheaper than past. Take an example of Euro. Euro has been cheaper by 20% in two years while Oil has ben costlier by 40% in two years. So if your Oil purchasing is in Euro than your consumption prices are increased only by 20%. And this uptrend is natural as the day by day consumption increasing. Just think how much consumption of Oil has been increased in two years. 10%, 20% or 50%?
And also think that wat you earn before two years. 3000bucks in a month? now you earn 5000bucks. Dont you think that we can offord very needful products even in $200.????????

Zoning regulations. Our productive zones are separated from our working zones by law.

In any case fusion may just save us:

Bussard Fusion Reactor
Easy Low Cost No Radiation Fusion

It has been funded:

Bussard Reactor Funded

The above reactor can burn Deuterium which is very abundant and produces lots of neutrons or it can burn a mixture of Hydrogen and Boron 11 which does not.

The implication of it is that we will know in 6 to 9 months if the small reactors of that design are feasible.

If they are we could have fusion plants generating electricity in 10 years or less depending on how much we want to spend to compress the time frame.

BTW Bussard is not the only thing going on in IEC. There are a few government programs at Los Alamos National Laboratory, MIT, the University of Wisconsin and at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana among others.

The Japanese and Australians also have programs.

====

Re: climate change. The IPCC has no solar science contingent.

Some solar scientists are predicting a Dalton/Maunder type minimum for the next 50 years. A little ice age. Global temperatures have been flat for the last 8 years. Is it a stall in the trend or an inflection point?

Deep ocean drilling raises the cost of extracting oil – my guess to the $20 a bbl range. That will put a cap on oil prices and reduce political instability.

You make some interesting analysis there, looking at number of years of oil at different prices. And I agree that the oil price may well come off a little in the next few months, as the weight of market speculation unwinds.

But in the slightly longer run, say two years away, I think you’re way off the mark in only considering $150 oil and its impact. That’s just a 50% rise, and if oil climbs just to that level I don’t think it will materially change our energy usage.

It will bring on recession (arguably that has already happened, as we approach $100 oil) but what will that do? Typically a recession results in just a 1%-2% drop in energy consumption.

But once we hit Peak Oil (and there were announcements from both BP and Total this month, suggesting that we have already done so, and the oil price may also be confirming this) then we can expect global oil production going forwards to fall by as much as 4% or more every twelve months.

If our consumption falls even by 2% a year, then it leaves an energy shortfall which is actually widening by 2% a year, and even with the world economy on the floor.

In 1998 oil was $9.80. In 2007 it’s $98. That’s a 1000% increase during just nine years. Now do you really think that $150 is the ceiling? Think again – think $200, $300, $400, and just keep going.

In that scenario, 40 mile one-way commutes become not just socially and morally irresponsible – they are economically unsustainable as well, for all sections of society.

Even the most rabid of I-don’t-give-a-toss climate change deniers will have to wake up, trade in the SUV and move closer in to town when that happens.

And it will, believe me – very soon.

I agree with most of your views. However, have you considered that there are many more oil fields that are currently untapped due to unfavorable political climate? For example, no drilling off of the California coast has been allowed, yet there are many (possible giant) reserves sitting within 50 miles of the Ca coast. Also, Alaska still has a lot of potential but is mired in political controversy, so nothing seems to happen on this front.

A full-fledged energy (and resultant food) crises will allow the political concerns to subside in favor of aggressive oil discovery and production right here in the US.

Still, we may be in for a Mad-Max scenario in the near term as food and energy production are reduced dramatically, with many adverse and unintended consequences.