[ROCKMAN]

Pops - But that's just the point I was trying to make. If a guy is laid off and his old clunker, thanks to a lack of maintenance, starts getting 15 mpg instead to the 20 mpg he had been getting, he hasn't gotten more efficient but less. He might only be driving 3 miles a week instead of the 200 miles when he was commuting to work. So he's doing a great job on conservation but a crappy one when it comes to efficiency.

And forget about the unemployed: hats off to all the recently dead and their contribution to leading our great country towards energy independence. They shall not be forgotten.

[John_A]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Pops', '
')Heck, if we can reduce the labor participation rate down to 40% or 50% I'll bet our efficiency doubles.

Ah, good times.

[John_A]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('ROCKMAN', ' ')So he's doing a great job on conservation but a crappy one when it comes to efficiency.

[Pops]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('ROCKMAN', 'P')ops - But that's just the point I was trying to make.

[TheAntiDoomer]

^ pops kinda reminds me of your reaction to every denial of a new peak and every new technology or growth in renewables

[John_A]

Moving goalposts?

End of Suburbia, 19:15 through 21:00

After the laughing dies down we can talk about who is moving what goalposts.

[AirlinePilot]

Driving less due to cost is not efficiency its rationing.

[ROCKMAN]

Pops – So I thought but that doesn’t prevent me from using you as a surrogate whipping boy…you take it so well. LOL.

That moving goal post reminds me of so many occasions I’ve run into with management over the last 38 years. One more true story from the crypt: During the boom of the late 70’s I worked for one of the most incompetent companies in the history of the oil patch. Just after I started they did a big show & tell for the CEO (who had zero industry experience). They presented the stats that while oil was selling for $30/bbl the company’s finding cost so far had been $44/bbl. Which was actually a lie…it was much worse but they cooked the books a bit.

After hearing the full presentation he announced a solution. If one looked at our successful wells the economics weren’t’ so bad. But when you factored in the dry holes and poor producers it made the company look like a failure. He said the solution was obvious to him: we should just concentrate on drilling the types of prospects that worked and avoid the ones that didn’t.

IOW the simple solution: don’t drill the dry holes. He then got on to the company plane and flew back to San Francisco comfortable that he had solved the problem. All he needed to do was tell us where to move the goal post so that every effort would produce a touchdown.

The company filed bankruptcy 3 years later and disappeared from the face of the earth…thank Dog.

[John_A]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('AirlinePilot', 'D')riving less due to cost is not efficiency its rationing.

[AirlinePilot]

Driving less due to PRICE is not efficiency. Fixed it for you.

[John_A]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('AirlinePilot', 'D')riving less due to PRICE is not efficiency. Fixed it for you.

[ralfy]

From what I know, efficiency in capitalist systems refers to increased production given the same amount of resources. The same applies to the same production level given fewer resources, as what is conserved will be invested elsewhere, leading to increased production.

[ROCKMAN]

Each year Nigerian producers burn billions of cubic feet of NG on the offshore platforms because that's the most efficient way to produce the oil. I'm pretty sure burning $billion of NG is not conservation.

[Pops]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('ralfy', 'F')rom what I know, efficiency in capitalist systems refers to increased production given the same amount of resources. The same applies to the same production level given fewer resources, as what is conserved will be invested elsewhere, leading to increased production.

[ROCKMAN]

Pops – ya know I never said pigs COULDN’T learn how to skate…just that the ornery little bastards won’t cooperate. LOL.

On a serious note we keep bumping into disagreements that often boil down to cause and effect discussions. Higher energy prices will drive efforts to improve efficiency. Over a long enough time span the average mpg of US vehicles will increase and we will be more efficient. But for the most part the motivation won’t be to help the health of the planet but to help the health of their wallets. While a few good hearted folks make those cuts for the sake of humanity they are a small minority IMHO.

In my world conservation is the deliberate effort to utilize less of a resource for the sake of reserving it for future use. Such an effort might even result in less efficiency. We see a lot of efforts that are much more efficient thanks to burning fossil fuels. This topic also rolls into to the concept of supply vs. demand. IMHO with respect to energy, supply will be equal to demand as a result of prices moderating demand. Which slides into the concept of conservation. If one reduces they energy consumption because they can’t afford to buy more that’s not conservation. If one can’t drive as much as they used to because they can’t afford the fuel that’s not conservation. And that fuel reduction might actually make their efforts less efficient in the process.

Lots of reason a person/country might reduce their oil consumption: can’t afford it…not available at any price…reducing dependency for the sake of national security…reducing to save the planet from the ravages of AGW. And to maintain my pissey view of the American public I don’t think many folks fall into those last three categories or any other.

[Pops]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('ROCKMAN', 'P')ops – ya know I never said pigs COULDN’T learn how to skate…just that the ornery little bastards won’t cooperate. LOL.

[pwallmann]

I think all of the diagreeing is largely semantics and everyone is at least partially right.

What we do know: Consumption is down in the developed world and up in the developing world. After that it's all speculation, all the regressions that we can run with economic data still leave alot to be desired in terms of parsing out causation. In the developed world It seems quite plausible that we are getting more efficient (if we define it as getting more output from a unit of input), but given the historical stabilized price of oil, and that it has coincided with a stagnant economy, my WAG is that the dominating factor is that we are consuming less because we can't afford to consume more. Just like, we are tapping unconventional resources because of both price and technology. However, I think most of us would agree that price is the dominating factor.

In my opinion, this is significant for two reasons: (1) Change in developed world consumption has always been the dominating market force on the demand side of the market. This is clearly not the case any longer. Developed Demand is relatively inelastic to price if we consider the 300% increase in price compared with the corresponding reduction in demand over the last decade or so, this suggests (to me) that Developing Demand has a long way to go before it stabilizes (at this price level). (2) The westtexas CNE story, rockman's refinery story, and POD seem to be producing a pretty (increasingly) inelastic supply side of the market. Ie. supply LEVELS are not responding to price as we would expect in a traditional (non constrained) market. Long have economists treated oil as a typical economic good. more demand --> higher prices --> less demand/more investment --> more supply --> lower prices --> more demand/less investment, and on and on.

I think it's clear that we've run into a wall where the "less demand/more investment" no longer leads to "more supply". Instead its, "more demand/more investment" --> "stagnating supply".

[John_A]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('ralfy', 'F')rom what I know, efficiency in capitalist systems refers to increased production given the same amount of resources. The same applies to the same production level given fewer resources, as what is conserved will be invested elsewhere, leading to increased production.

[AirlinePilot]

The situation with vehicle miles traveled starting @2008 is significant. Numbers of people and cars have not changed SIGNIFICANTLY. VMT has. VMT had been increasing as the numbers of cars AND people increased for a VERY long time. Ask yourself what changed in the 2007-08 time frame. The idea that per capita consumption matters remains to be seen, at least over a much longer term than a few years with respect to VMT. Population driven changes since 2008 account for .3% , while vehicle miles traveled are down nearly 6.5% since that year. That is up to mid 2011.

Since I could find the numbers easily, If we apply the 2004 rate of fuel usage (or MPG) to 2012 VMT, we find that the improvement in fuel mileage between 2004 and 2012 reduced fuel usage by 347 thousand barrels a day over the eight year period, which is equivalent to a reduction of about 43 thousand barrels a day, per year.

The total reduction in gasoline use between 2004 and 2012, relative to what would have been expected, (based on the previous years trends), is about 1.49 million barrels a day. Thus, this calculation implies that about 20% of gasoline savings is from better mileage; the other 80% is from driving fewer miles.

Those numbers are from the US DOT and EIA data.

You can argue this all day long but the truth sits squarely (at least with VMT...and that IS a significant part of US consumption) on the fact that it is NOT efficiency which is causing the drop. A very small part of it is, but the majority of the VMT drop in the US is purely folks driving less because the price is so high for gasoline and the recession.

That is not semantics or an ideological difference. Claiming such is disingenuous and lacks intellectual honesty. My mistake calling it "rationing" as that really isnt what is happening.....Ill own that one....poor choice of words.

[pwallmann]

I agree with you AP, but again its just semantics, if I choose to define efficiency in terms of Units of GDP produced for every VMT (which I don't) you could say we're getting more efficient as a society (marginal GDP gains along with a reduction of VMT). It's not wholly unreasonable to frame it in this way.