black321 wrote:

Nuclear energy is the future. Whether it be atoms split here, or smashed out there. 

I wonder if the Saudi's know something that we dont?

Oil Giant Saudi Arabia Is Emerging as a Solar Power

The kingdom is betting that sunshine can power new AI data centers and help boost oil exports

• Saudi Arabia is rapidly expanding its solar power capacity, aiming for 50% clean energy by 2030 to power new projects.
• The shift is driven by the falling costs of Chinese solar panels and batteries, making solar a cost-effective alternative to burning oil.
• Saudi Arabia’s ACWA Power is undertaking power projects in Africa and Asia, exploring sending electricity to Europe in the future.

https://www.wsj.com/business/e...

Oxy is a great company. I don't own but have glanced at it over the years.  It was chased out of Colombia where it worked in joint ventures with the state-owned oil company Ecopetrol.   The ELN constantly sabotaged the pipeline and threatened platform workers with kidnapping. ELN = National Liberation Army.

this is in part blowback from US blank cheque support for Israel.     The Israeli colonization of the former Palestinian Mandate is part of the ideological narrative of the ELN Neo-Marxist, liberation theology influenced guerrilla movement.   That should not be surprising as the Marxist left always claimed to represent the interests of the exploited in colonial relationships.  The Catholic concept of 'Just War' dovetails nicely as does the historic commitment to the poor and down trodden.

Other North American oil & gas exploration & production company executives have cited policy uncertainty as a major factor in the hesitancy to increase capital expenditures.     Look at how the high priest of policy morality President Biden has flip-flopped on the oil industry since the beginning of his mandate.   Are more policy flip-flops in store for the future?

If one cares about the national security of the USA and if one wants to absolutely avoid nuclear conflict, then there is no justification whatsoever for emptying the Strategic Petroleum Reserves (SPR) at this time, especially in the context of the Russian invasion of (the rest of) Ukraine.   

Biden is showing himself to be a blow-with-the-wind populist leader.   That creates uncertainty for business in general, not just the o&g industry.

Note that the history of oil prices is highly cyclical. As a general rule, any sustained period of high prices is followed by periods of significantly lower prices.   In the all-in breakeven area or even lower than unit operating (variable) costs.   Experienced o&g professionals know that it is just a question of time before oil and natural gas prices decline, as they already have since early, mid-2022 peaks.  

The pandemic depressed prices and investment in supply growth. The recovery from the pandemic drove oil prices to over US$90/bbl (Brent).  The Russian invasion and NATO-member sanctions against Russia sent first oil and then natural gas prices, especially in Europe, into the stratosphere.  As usual the sanctions were not particularly effective.  

The easy to assess risk is that the global economy goes into recession and drives down global oil consumption.   Prices go lower.

The hardest to assess risk for oil & gas companies is if, when and how peace breaks out in Ukraine.   Politics is fickle.   It  can turn on a dime when the costs constantly pile up.  

The US federal government should post haste start increasing federal excise taxes on gasoline and diesel so consumers face higher incentives to conserve and reduce.  Penalizing supply will only increase costs and reduce material standards of living.

Interesting article on one of the biggest US oil producers...why she (CEO) and the rest of the industry won't increase production, and some mixed comments on the Inflation Reduction Act

This oil company backed by Warren Buffett is America’s hottest stock. Why won’t its CEO pump more oil?

There's no pressure to increase production’: Vicki Hollub’s Occidental dominates the nation’s biggest oil field, landing her on the MarketWatch 50 list of the most influential people in markets.

Vicki Hollub’s Occidental Petroleum controls the biggest piece of the most important area for oil production in the United States. Not so long ago, an oilman in a position like that—and it would’ve been a man, before Hollub came along—would have gone for broke, turning up production to its physical limits.

Not Hollub. Occidental produces on average the equivalent of about 1.15 million barrels of oil a day, and that’s more than enough to turn a profit. The company can make money as long as oil prices are above $40 a barrel. They’ve been above $80 for almost all of this year, as the war in Ukraine takes a toll on global markets and the Saudi-led oil cartel OPEC now slashes production.

“We don’t feel like we’re in a national crisis right now,” Hollub told MarketWatch in an interview. And that means Hollub can keep executing on her plans: making shareholders happy by paying down debt and buying back shares. “When you have such a low break-even, to me there’s no pressure to increase production right now, when we have these other two ways that we can increase shareholder value,” Hollub said.

https://www.marketwatch.com/st...

Doctors say ‘fossil fuel addiction’ kills, starves millions

 black321 wrote:
He's unlikely to blame himself and his buddies for their part. They clearly need more subsidies!

 rgio wrote:

whether those profits and salary are obscene or not is not the point.
rather, we need a plan, even if only from China, US, India an Europe...otherwise there will be more volatility and higher energy prices...not to mention further delays in this seemingly inevitable transition. 

 black321 wrote:
Chevron is posting record profits.  Wirth's salary for 2021 = $22,610,285

I agree a plan would be useful, but the reality is you can't really make a plan beyond the US, as oil is a global commodity.  It's always easier to stay the course...until it's too late.

There is going to be pain whenever the move occurs, and people who can't plan a menu are going to talk about how the move was done poorly...but if not now, when?

I think Wirth (Chevron) has a point. Not about a premature transition (we transitioned too late), but that all the talk about transitioning is pie in the sky. There are no real strategies to transition, but at the same time the biden administration is signaling this intended shift...making it harder for oil companies to plan. End result is not enough is being invested in both alternative and fossil fuel energy sources, leaving the markets in flux...and risking the sourcing of adequate energy needs. 

Chevron chief blames western governments for energy crunch
Mike Wirth points to ‘unintended consequences’ of pivot away from fossil fuels

Western governments have made a global oil and gas crunch worse by “doubling down” on climate policies that will make energy markets “more volatile, more unpredictable, more chaotic”, the head of US supermajor Chevron has warned.

Mike Wirth, Chevron’s chief executive, said a premature effort to transition from fossil fuels had resulted in “unintended consequences”, including energy supply insecurity from crisis-hit Europe to California.

Despite heavy global investment in renewables in the past 20 years, fossil fuels still met about 80 per cent of global demand, and governments had to hold an “honest conversation” about the scale of the energy challenge, Wirth said.

But Wirth said the source of the energy crunch predated Russia’s invasion and followed years of under-investment in new oil supply. Annual capital spending on oil and gas projects was now about half the rate seen in years before the pandemic, he said, even though demand for the energy has continued to rise.

Meanwhile, spending on alternatives to oil and gas was “woefully short, trillions of dollars short”, Wirth said. The mismatch “illustrates the risk in moving from a system that keeps the world functioning today aggressively to another system, and shutting down nuclear, shutting down coal, discouraging oil and gas”, he added.

Chevron last year announced plans to spend $10bn over seven years on low-carbon technologies, and has an “aspiration” to reduce its operational emissions to net zero by 2050, although this does not include pollution from the products it sells. Total capital spending this year would amount to $15bn, including $800mn on its low carbon business

“There’s not a lot of deep energy expertise in the administration . . . There’s a point of view that you find quite visible in the administration that we can move from system A to system B very quickly and easily. And it’s not that simple.”

paywall, but you can register for free access to limited articles.
https://www.ft.com/content/83d...

 cc_rider wrote:
 

Nah - Lazy has already debunked that efficiency. Hemp is just a tree-hugger's pipe dream.

 black321 wrote:
 
In most residential cases, I do not think it is worth it. There are too many different kinds of plastic, way too difficult for the average person to keep track of. However, I think there are opportunities in places like sports venues, where it's possible to control what comes in. If every plastic container was the same type, sorting would be much simpler.

Lighter-weight (plastic) packaging can be more beneficial, or at least, 'less harmful' than some other types. Like returnable glass bottles: they realized they were burning more gas hauling empties, so they switched to thinner/lighter glass - then of course to plastic. Weight savings equals less fuel burned.

Similar argument with plastic grocery bags. One pound of plastic grocery bags might be maybe 100 bags? One pound of paper bags is a fraction of that. Plus paper bags are high-grade wood pulp - recycled paper isn't strong enough. You have to harvest and process those trees, ship them, etc. There's a legitimate argument that those annoying plastic bags are better, overall, than paper - some even say better than reusable bags.

I'd like to see more investment in industrial hemp products. Hemp is superior to wood pulp in many, many ways.
c.

so is recycling plastic worth it? 
obviously minimizing plastic is preferred, but that is so very difficult in today's world.
once again, is our focus on all things efficient (plastic being lighter, cheaper, easier to process...) backfiring?

 Red_Dragon wrote:
 
As an engineer who's designed a LOT of plastic parts, I routinely specify things like 'XXX Grade virgin PC/ABS - maximum 10% regrind permissible'.

Often it's a specific company (Bayer is a big one - yes, the aspirin people), PC is polycarbonate, ABS is Acrylonitrile butadiene styrene, PC/ABS is a blend of both. Plus color and finish specifications.
'Regrind' is pieces from the molding process - runners, etc. that can be tossed back into the batch. If you ever built a plastic model, it's the 'tree' the parts were still attached to. 'Regrind' is limited because the plastic loses some of its properties with every re-processing - just as the article states.

To be fair, virtually every part I design has strict cosmetic requirements - think Apple products. Pure materials are required for process control and aesthetics.

I'm not sure why nobody is pursuing, or at least hasn't publicized, using plastic refuse as fuel. It started out as oil, right? We know it burns - light a piece of styrofoam sometime - so why not process it back from whence it came? Worst case it's a zero-sum game - you generate enough fuel to power the process - but that's still better than endlessly filling up landfills.
c.

How Big Oil Misled The Public Into Believing Plastic Would Be Recycled

 oldslabsides wrote: 

Life is being rearranged as we speak.  Has been going on in earnest for the past 5 or so years, since oil spiked the last time.  Began about 10 years earlier after 9-11.  Not because of 9-11, but about that time when the following recession hit.  People lost jobs due to offshoring, automation, technology improvements, whatever. 

Rearranging 300 million people takes some time to do, especially when we don't even know what the jobs of the future are going to be and where they will be.  Alternative fuel and power source development are well underway but realistically it will take several decades to get away from petroleum as the primary source.  And I do believe it will happen, but only when the alternatives are practical and affordable.  The market place will determine that.  We already have real alternatives as miamizsun has tried to point out with the Thorium reactors, others will follow, it is happening.

But planes will not fly on batteries, trucks will not roll on batteries, and neither will busses.  We have an oil glut and it will continue.  The US has 25% of the world's oil reserves according to a recent study.  The trucking industry is in the process of switching to natural gas.  That will cause problems for refiners with a falling demand for diesel.  You cannot make gasoline without making diesel.  That is the reason that gas is less expensive in the winter, diesel production goes up to meet home heating needs, resulting in an oversupply of gasoline.  And vice versa in the summer with summer car travel.  Eventually the US will become an exporter of diesel fuel due to oversupply.

I have seen electric charging stations in California as well as here in Ohio.  In Cal, they are being used, but here in Ohio, they are not, because electric cars are impractical in areas that experience hard winters and long commutes in the cold.  The heaters in these electric cars still run on gasoline, just as the auxiliary heaters in VW's did some 40 years ago.  The more things change, the more they remain the same.

But I have faith.  When the range of an electric car hits 100 miles on a charge, then there will be a demand for them, but 40 miles, just ain't doin it and won't.  But my point and the point of many others is that we need cheap oil to survive the transition.  The transition has begun and will not stop, even if oil gets cheap.  The goal of reducing pollution is the driving force.  The cost of pollution is very high, as in spent nuclear fuel rods, coal ash and sulfur from refining crude.  And CFL's are the Windows ME of lighting, speaking about pollution.  I am already well into LED's for my lighting needs, paying a higher price for a better and greener product.  Think how long it took to switch over from bias ply tires to radials.  Took decades, but it happened.

Politics and the rest of the world not withstanding ... 

 oldslabsides wrote: 
You have it all wrong, it is Obama's fault as soon as we throw him out gas prices will go down, our lawns will turn greener and we will all live happily ever after.

 kurtster wrote: 
No, that's not what is implied.  What is implied is exactly what I said: people should get a clue and rearrange their lives to fit the realities of a world wherein there are too many of them demanding too much of a finite set of resources.  Sadly, I doubt that's gonna happen.

 oldslabsides wrote: 
Somehow my reply this morning disappeared.

In it I asked if that implied that the government should tell us where to live.  That was oversimplistic.  But no less oversimplistic than stating that more than a 30 mile commute is irresponsible.

There are so many reasons why it cannot happen except in urban centers in the Northeastern US.  America is not built vertically with 1,000 people living in apartment buildings except in a few places.  Home ownership cements people into locations that may have been close to employment at one time, but changing jobs changes commutes for example.  Your solution would not work in SoCal for example.  People would kill for a 30 mile commute, yet the reality of finding afforable housing takes people far away from their jobs requiring long commutes.  Public transportation is a joke in SoCal.  It exists, but it does not go places people go. 

Housing lotteries were common in the 80's there due to a shortage of housing.  Your vision requires everyone to move into cities and give up rural life altogether.  I abhor city living.  The noise, crime, pollution, high costs of food and the hassle of traffic and getting around just plain sucks and is not worth it, for me.  I haven't owned a vehicle that gets less than 30 mpg for over 20 years.  I've done my due diligence.  I made it out to a rural setting and will not give it up.  If and when I get a vehicle that gets 40 mpg, I want to move farther out, not closer. 

 kurtster wrote: 
I figured you were being hyperbolic.  Yes, consumption is lower than a few years ago, but I don't know if that means it won't increase again; at these prices, it doesn't seem likely though.