[Dezakin]

Bah, no one's thinking this through.

The biggest winner in peal oil is the next best thing: Coal.

As oil continue to rise in price, coal liquefaction facilities will become more and more economical.

Demand for coal based fuels will raise the price of coal, eventually pushing most of the grid towards nuclear power unless some other energy technology somehow becomes more cost competitive, so over a longer period nuclear power does well.

[Leanan]

I mentioned coal, but only as a short-term "buy." Coal is not going to be the answer. I don't think we have as much as people think.

Did you see that article on the front page today, about Utah? They thought their coal reserves were inexhaustible. Now, they figure they have only 14-19 years' worth left.

Something similar happened with natural gas. As recently as 2000, everyone thought we had hundreds of years' worth. Wrong. We're already facing decline. The energy industry was blindsided by this; it wasn't a conspiracy, they really thought we were the "Saudi Arabia of natural gas."

It's hard to predict these things, and financial types tend to be optimistic. It's in their nature. Also, I don't think they anticipated how much demand would grow.

But I also think they are not taking "diminishing returns" into account. The highest quality and most easily accessible coal was mined first. What's left is expensive to extract, and not as good. It's only going to get tougher from here on.

Unlike other commodities, higher prices won't necessarily make coal economical. It takes a lot of petroleum to mine coal. If it takes more energy than you get back, it's not going to be economical no matter how high the price rises.

[Dezakin]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'I') mentioned coal, but only as a short-term "buy." Coal is not going to be the answer. I don't think we have as much as people think.

[Ludi]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Leanan', ' ')They thought their coal reserves were inexhaustible. Now, they figure they have only 14-19 years' worth left.

[Leanan]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')hat's quite a leap from "inexhaustible" to only a couple decades' worth!

[jmacdaddio]

More winners:

16. Bicycle manufacturers and retailers.
17. Bicycle thieves.

More Losers:
Gyms / Health clubs. Who needs more exercise when you're working in the fields and biking everywhere?
McMansion builders. Who on earth would want a K.Hovnanian home 35 miles from anywhere after PO?

[kenohio]

GE has a commercial on TV about having 250 years worth of coal available. It has hot looking lady coal miners digging around.

I think there is still plenty of coal available in different parts of the world. It will be more expensive to mine it than it has been in the past, but I have read several different places where it costs $32 to produce the liquified equivelant of a barrel of oil from coal.

So if you used the barrel of energy created from coal to mine more coal, I am sure that you could make more profit than you can using todays $50 barrel of the real thing, if those figures are correct.

The big bash on coal has been that it is dirtier to use than Natural gas or oil, and in many instances over the past few decades it wasn't as economically feasible. Ie why mine coal if you can pump up cheaper and cleaner gas or oil.

As the pendulum swings into coals favor you will see extensive profits and earnings in areas with large coal reserves. Many of these areas of the United States thrived back before cheap oil and gas displaced the workforce.

Look for many of these areas to thrive again in the future. Might be a good place to look for available farmland for Peak oil people looking for a place to settle in post Peak Oil. They can grow food and actually sell it to some of the few people in the country that can afford it. Those that are mining coal, and those that own the coal reserves being mined.

Plus many of these areas have plenty of rail access left over from the earlier coal booms.

[Ludi]

Just make sure you're buying the mineral rights to your land, so someone doesn't decide to dig up your farm to look for coal....

[ubercrap]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('kenohio', 'G')E has a commercial on TV about having 250 years worth of coal available. It has hot looking lady coal miners digging around.

I think there is still plenty of coal available in different parts of the world. It will be more expensive to mine it than it has been in the past, but I have read several different places where it costs $32 to produce the liquified equivelant of a barrel of oil from coal.

So if you used the barrel of energy created from coal to mine more coal, I am sure that you could make more profit than you can using todays $50 barrel of the real thing, if those figures are correct.

The big bash on coal has been that it is dirtier to use than Natural gas or oil, and in many instances over the past few decades it wasn't as economically feasible. Ie why mine coal if you can pump up cheaper and cleaner gas or oil.

As the pendulum swings into coals favor you will see extensive profits and earnings in areas with large coal reserves. Many of these areas of the United States thrived back before cheap oil and gas displaced the workforce.

Look for many of these areas to thrive again in the future. Might be a good place to look for available farmland for Peak oil people looking for a place to settle in post Peak Oil. They can grow food and actually sell it to some of the few people in the country that can afford it. Those that are mining coal, and those that own the coal reserves being mined.

Plus many of these areas have plenty of rail access left over from the earlier coal booms.

[DriveElectric]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Dezakin', 'B')ah, no one's thinking this through.

The biggest winner in peal oil is the next best thing: Coal.

As oil continue to rise in price, coal liquefaction facilities will become more and more economical.

[JBinKC]

Oil companies may not necessarily do well as well as you think in a peak oil environment because gross volumes will be decreasing.


For instance, since the lows crude made in the fall of 1998 the return from a barrel of WTI crude bettered every oil major.



Personally, I am going to stick with what has always worked for me. Picking stocks irregardless of a specific sector that have a deeply discounted accounting value, a low share float, and a catalyst preferably from strong sales and earnings momentum and beat the institutions to the stock (So that means microcap).

[ROCKMAN]

The irony is that at least 50,000 bbls/day of Eagle Ford oil is being shipped at a much lower cost to Canada since Jones Act vessels aren’t required. So not only are the folks in FL paying more for their fuel but oil is also being removed from the Gulf Coast market place allowing for upward price pressure for the feedstock to produce the fuels for those Floridians.

BTW at $110k/day that’s about $40 million/yr plus fuel. Granted there’s maintenance, crew and other overhead costs. But searching the web such tankers cost $40 - $60 million new built. So, at least in the short term, the owners of those few Jones Act tankers appear to be big winners.

Reuters - A Jones Act tanker was recently chartered for six months at a record high rate of $110,000 per day. ExxonMobil last week agreed to renew its charter agreement for the 337,000-barrel Overseas Cascade at a 50 percent increase from its previous rate for the same ship this summer. The century-old Jones Act requires all vessels operating between U.S. ports to be U.S.-built, U.S.-owned and U.S.-crewed in order to protect the U.S. commercial maritime industry.

The new rate will take effect in January and last six months, with an option to extend for another six months. The rate does not include fuel. "It's difficult for me to agree that this is the new normal, but I do believe that rates will go up," said one person involved in the Jones Act market. Rates for Jones Act tankers, previously used primarily to ferry gasoline and diesel from Gulf Coast refiners to Florida or the East Coast, have surged this year as traders redirected half a dozen vessels to carry Eagle Ford crude from the port of Corpus Christi to refiners up the coast in Texas and Louisiana.

There are fewer than 50 tankers currently moving crude oil and refined products between U.S. ports. About a dozen trade strictly between Alaskan production sites and refineries on the West Coast. For the past six months, the Overseas Cascade has carried gasoline and refined products from Port Arthur, Texas, to Port Everglades in Florida.