[KaiserJeep]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('jedrider', 'Y')ou seem very HUNGRY Kaiser: Why would you need TWO ranges in one kitchen for cooking?

Induction seems very neat and, certainly, easy to keep clean.

Once you choose one or the other, I think you will be happy either way.

[DesuMaiden]

How much is stated to left in terms of years of consumption is based on the assumption that current levels of consumption remain constant, which they will not. In fact, it is very misleading to say that we have "x" amount of oil or whatever other resource left because that's not how things work. It works in terms of peak supply/demand. We are already approaching peak supply, so peak demand will soon follow suit. Once peak supply is surpassed, the production levels of oil will decrease, and so will the demand subsequently decrease. This will extend the amount of time we have left to keep on using oil, but once the EROEI (Energy Return On Energy Invested) for oil (or any other energy source) drops to 1 or under, we are loosing net energy, not gaining it, thereby making extracting oil economically inviable, and therefore pointless as an endeavor.

[AdamB]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Revi', 'G')ood to know that we have so much energy left.

[Revi]

Good to know that everything is fine Adam B!

[ROCKMAN]

Revi - Yes indeed everything is just fine in Adam's transitioning world. The world where 98.4% of the 84 MILLION light vehicles bought in 2016 run on fossil fuels...just like the 1.2 TRILLION ICE vehicles running down the world's roads today.

Happy Holidays, bubba.

[AdamB]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Revi', 'G')ood to know that everything is fine Adam B!

[AdamB]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('ROCKMAN', 'R')evi - Yes indeed everything is just fine in Adam's transitioning world. The world where 98.4% of the 84 MILLION light vehicles bought in 2016 run on fossil fuels...just like the 1.2 TRILLION ICE vehicles running down the world's roads today.

Happy Holidays, bubba.

[Revi]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('AdamB', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Revi', 'G')ood to know that everything is fine Adam B!

[ROCKMAN]

Adam - "This is why it is a transitioning world Rockman". Sorry for being to subtle, buddy. Let me more blunt, if I may. Not only are we not f*cking transitioning we are losing ground like a bastard red hair child. LOL.

AGAIN: this year the world bought 82 million light vehicles of which 98.5% were ICE's. That's not transitioning...that going deeper into a f*cking hole. A hole that already has 1.2 billion ICE vehicles in it burning fossil fuels every f*cking day.

IOW new sales going from 55% ICE's to 45% is a transitioning Not much of a transition but a start. But going from 100% ICE to 98.5% ICE does not make a transition...it's losing ground BIG TIME, right?

[Subjectivist]

Hey ROCKMAN, the way I understand it natural gas is more or less methane everywhere, but oil ranges from xtra heavy to extra light and coal ranges from wet brown lignite to Anthracite so black it is almost Graphite. You can substitute super heavy oil for super light but it takes a lot of chemistry work to do it, and brown coal hasn't got a great enery output compared to Anthracite so you need to burn a lot more to get out the same amount of heat.

So do these numbers for oil and coal even mean anything? If we use all that extra heavy Venezuala and Alberta and Utah tar oil won't it last a lot longer than the super light fracked oil from North Dakota?

[ROCKMAN]

Sub - As pointed out before refineries, as a generality, don't process heavy oil or light condensate. US refineries optimize output by cracking 'blended oil' with a fairly narrtow gravity around 31 to 33 API. As you point out NG (at least what you burn in you stove or heater) is essentially 100% methane. Well head NG can contain a lot of heavy chains...NGL's.

The refiners blend to provide the most marketable yields they can manage. FYI: you already know that Cushing is the biggest oil storage facility on the planet. But why the f*ck would it be built in the first place and in OK?

It wasn't built for storage per se...it was built as a blending facility. The storage was built to hold the blended oil. In reality there isn't that much "natural" WTI. The WTI price you see is for oil blended to the general specs of WTI. But the blending companies focus on their profit margin more the the exact nature if their blends. Refineries bought what the blenders had to offer or they bought nothing. So a new trend began a couple of years ago: some refineries started buying oil directly from us producers and did blends that suited them better.

What? You thought most if us producers sold oil directly to refineries? That's the exception and not the rule. You've seen the term "first oil sales" price. That's what I get paid by the "gathering company". Everyone knows lot of oil company names: ExxonMobil, Chevron, etc. But not many know the names of the companies (like Plains Resources) that actually sell the oil to the refineries.

"Plains Resources, Inc. engages in the acquisition, development, and exploitation of crude oil and natural gas. The company also has interests in the midstream activities of marketing, gathering, transportation, terminalling, and storage of crude oil."

In turn Plains Resources is one of the owners of Plains All Amertican Pipeline. And who the f*ck is this little company PAAP that few here have ever heard of? It handles 4 million barrels per day of crude oil and natural gas liquids, a vital role in the movement of U.S. and Canadian energy supplies.

BTW did you know that some of the "WTI oil" refined at the ExxonMobil plant across the highway from the Rockman began its life as Canadian oil sands production? And that it was mixed 75/25 in Alberta with US light condensate so it can be pumped down a pipeline to Cushing, OK? And was reblended there closer to WTI specs? And then shipped to the refinery across the road from the Rockman's home?

The energy industry has a lot of "men behind the curtain" that many don't even know exist.

[Revi]

Very interesting! So they take the tar sands oil, mix it with the light Bakken and ship it to Cushing where it gets mixed with oil coming out of Texas and everywhere and mix it up into WTI. Does it make products with the same energy density as it had back in the day? I know that the octane of gasoline has been going down. Thanks Rockman!

[ROCKMAN]

Revi - Not the Bakken. It isn't that light. They were needing around 750,000 bbls of very light oil/condensate per day to make "dilbit"...diluted bitumen. But Canada was short by 350,000 bbls per day so US production made up the difference.

It might be a big surprise to learn much of that condensate is being as shipped as far to Canada as the oil sands production is shipped to US refineries. For instance from 2013:

"Earlier this year Enterprise Products Partners announced it would develop a project to ship diluent quality distillate from Texas to Chicago where it could then be shipped to Western Canada on either Enbridge’s Southern Lights pipeline or Kinder Morgan’s Cochin pipeline."

IOW: condensate from the S Texas Eagle Ford Shale goes to Louisiana and then goes to Chicago and then goes to Alberta and then goes to Cushing, OK and then goes to Texas refineries. From there much of that gasoline goes to north eastern states via the Colonial Pipeline. That 5,000 mile pipeline is the largest U.S. refined products pipeline system and can daily carry more than 3 million barrels of gasoline, diesel and jet fuel between the U.S. Gulf Coast and the New York Harbor area.

Did you realize some of the hydrocarbon chains in your car's tank (as well as those of your neighbors) have traveled a total of about 8,000+ miles to get to you? IOW from S Texas to Alberta to OK to Texas to your car's fuel tank. And guess what: there are hydrocarbon molecules that have followed that same route and the continued on to a storage tank in the Netherlands where it was shipped to Paris and ended up in some Frogs car.

As far as energy density gasoline is a specific hydrocarbon chain. As such its energy density is fixed and has never changed. Of course the octane rating can vary but as far as I know that doesn't affect the energy density. The octane rating of gasoline tells you how much the fuel can be compressed before it spontaneously ignites. The octane requirement of an engine varies with compression ratio, geometrical and mechanical considerations and operating conditions. The higher the octane number the greater the fuel’s resistance to knocking or pinging during combustion.

I suspect you're buying into the bullshit put out about the decreased value of oil and refinery products we've experienced over time. The chemical structure (and thus energy density) of specific hydrocarbon chains is fixed and has never chained. For instance would you believe someone if they told you that the structure of H2O has changed over the years? LOL. Now what has changed over time is the YIELD COMPONENTS of the various oils in the world. But the energy density of a gallon of gasoline molecules produced in 1930 is identical to a gallon produced yesterday. Just as the H2O someone drank decades ago is still H2O today.

Don't let folks with various personal agendas confuse you.

[ROCKMAN]

Revi - I forgot to point out that some of the gasoline molecules in your car may have come out of a well in Ghawar Field in Saudi Arabia and then went by tanker thru the Suez Canal across the Med and around up the English Channel to a refinery in Norway. There is was gravity separated, put back into another tanker that hauled it back thru the English Channel and across the Atlantic Ocean to a fuel storage tank in New Jersey. From there some was delivered to your gas station.

There's a huge swap between the US and Europe with gasoline and diesel since we vary significantly in our motor fuel choices.

[Tanada]

Regarding the whole 'octane rating' thing. Most car engines built before say 1975 were made of cast iron and it was easy to increase compression by either making the piston shaft slightly longer or by turbocharging the engine. The higher the compression ratio the more efficiently the fuel gets burned and the more power you get out of it on a volume by volume basis. Then two things happened, the US government made it illegal to use cheap convenient tetra-ethyl lead in gasoline as an octane booster because we were all getting lead poisoning and it also clogs up the pollution control devices that eliminate much of the SMOG that was poisoning Denver, Colorado and Los Angeles, California. You can still make high octane fuel, but it ain't cheap anymore like it used to be. The second change was some clever engineers figured out that by reducing the construction weight of a car you could greatly reduce its lifetime fuel consumption. They did two major things, they removed the solid steel frame and replaced it with a thin stamped metal 'unibody' construction technique, and they replaced the cast iron engine block with cast aluminum that weighs 1/3rd as much per volume. Then because of the octane reduction they had to reduce the compression ratio of the engine to prevent knock and ping, and with a lower compression ratio they could make the engine block thinner and lighter without worry that it would crack.

Some liquid fuels have naturally high 'octane' ratings because it takes a LOT of compression to ignite them. Kerosene aka Diesel #1 and Road Diesel aka Diesel #2 are prime examples of this. However Ethanol the blending component in E-10 (gasohol) and E-85 has an octane rating well over 100. Being smart my kid brother switched the fuel system components in his turbocharged sports car to be E-85 compliant and saved a boatload of money by using E-85 in place of the 93 Octane premium fuel his car was 'designed' for. In fact anyone with an E-85 flex fuel vehicle would be doing themselves a huge favor by turbocharging the engine, that lets you get more energy out of the E-85 than you get at the wimpy standard 87 Octane compression ratio of 'regular unleaded'.

The Federal Government could pass a law next week requiring all new passenger vehicles to have a minimum octane rating of 90. The car makers would then moderately increase the compression ratio of the new model engines and the fuel companies would tweak the 'midgrade' gasoline formula to push it up from 89 octane to 90 octane. Most people would never even notice the difference unless they tried running their cars on 'regular 87' but the fuel efficiency would be slightly higher so the total fuel consumed by the newer cars would be slightly lower. So why don't they pass such a regulation? Because the 10 cent a gallon price difference would create a huge controversy because of the way our politics work in America.

[ROCKMAN]

Revi Here's some more WTF facts to intertain your neighbors with. BTW you probably see now how the Rockman enjoys being one of the site's "myth busters". LOL. You already know from my previous posts there has never been an effective ban on exporting US oil. And that the vast majority has gone to Canada. Canada which is actually exempt from the "ban law" itself.

At one time there were two pipelines that once carried IMPORTED light oil from the port of Corpus Christi in Texas to refineries in San Antonio. That oil was blended with S Texas heavy oil and refined. But with the boom in the Eagle Ford play, in which San Antonio sits, those imports stopped since the refineries had a huge local supply. So much condensate that those two pipelines were reversed with the EFS production was sent back to CC. And from CC hundreds of millions of bbls of EFS condensate have been hauled by tankers half way around the country to refineries in eastern Canada. Refineries that blended that condensate with their heavy oils. Blended oil that was refined into various products. And 1.7 BILLION gallons of gasoline cracked from that oil was exported in 2015. And half that gasoline was shipped by tanker back half way around the country to Mexico. Mexico (that became a net fossil fuel IMPORTER two years ago) which has a crappy refinery infrastructure.

So to summarize: Eagle Ford condensate goes from San Antonio to Corpus Christ (about 100 miles from the Mexican border) and then goes by tanker to eastern Canada where it is blended with heavy oils imported from the ME and N Africa and then cracked. And about 850 million gallons of the gasoline yield from that blended oil is shipped by tankers to Mexican ports just down the coast from Corpus Christi.

Yes: there are some gasoline molecules were are shipped half way around the country TWICE and end up being burned in Mexican vehicles just a few hundreds miles from the Eagle Ford wells they came out of originally. In fact it's theoretically possible that some of the gasoline molecules burned in some vehicles used to drilled EFS wells followed that 10,000 mile route since more the a few Texans buy fuel just over the Mexican border.

[JimBof]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Tanada', 'R')egarding the whole 'octane rating' thing. Most car engines built before say 1975 were made of cast iron and it was easy to increase compression by either making the piston shaft slightly longer or by turbocharging the engine. The higher the compression ratio the more efficiently the fuel gets burned and the more power you get out of it on a volume by volume basis. Then two things happened, the US government made it illegal to use cheap convenient tetra-ethyl lead in gasoline as an octane booster because we were all getting lead poisoning and it also clogs up the pollution control devices that eliminate much of the SMOG that was poisoning Denver, Colorado and Los Angeles, California. You can still make high octane fuel, but it ain't cheap anymore like it used to be. The second change was some clever engineers figured out that by reducing the construction weight of a car you could greatly reduce its lifetime fuel consumption. They did two major things, they removed the solid steel frame and replaced it with a thin stamped metal 'unibody' construction technique, and they replaced the cast iron engine block with cast aluminum that weighs 1/3rd as much per volume. Then because of the octane reduction they had to reduce the compression ratio of the engine to prevent knock and ping, and with a lower compression ratio they could make the engine block thinner and lighter without worry that it would crack.

Some liquid fuels have naturally high 'octane' ratings because it takes a LOT of compression to ignite them. Kerosene aka Diesel #1 and Road Diesel aka Diesel #2 are prime examples of this. However Ethanol the blending component in E-10 (gasohol) and E-85 has an octane rating well over 100. Being smart my kid brother switched the fuel system components in his turbocharged sports car to be E-85 compliant and saved a boatload of money by using E-85 in place of the 93 Octane premium fuel his car was 'designed' for. In fact anyone with an E-85 flex fuel vehicle would be doing themselves a huge favor by turbocharging the engine, that lets you get more energy out of the E-85 than you get at the wimpy standard 87 Octane compression ratio of 'regular unleaded'.

The Federal Government could pass a law next week requiring all new passenger vehicles to have a minimum octane rating of 90. The car makers would then moderately increase the compression ratio of the new model engines and the fuel companies would tweak the 'midgrade' gasoline formula to push it up from 89 octane to 90 octane. Most people would never even notice the difference unless they tried running their cars on 'regular 87' but the fuel efficiency would be slightly higher so the total fuel consumed by the newer cars would be slightly lower. So why don't they pass such a regulation? Because the 10 cent a gallon price difference would create a huge controversy because of the way our politics work in America.

[AdamB]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('ROCKMAN', 'A')dam - "This is why it is a transitioning world Rockman". Sorry for being to subtle, buddy. Let me more blunt, if I may. Not only are we not f*cking transitioning we are losing ground like a bastard red hair child. LOL.

[ROCKMAN]

And what's obvious to the rest of us but not to Adam is that what he observes driving around has no bearing on a global lack of transition from ICE's to alt vehicles. Almost 80 million fossil fuel burning and GHG emitting vehicles were added to the existing 1+ BILLION already on the planet. Kinda like saying its good news to report a patient's cancer is no longer spreading...because they died. LOL.

But don't give of the fight, Adam. Just post some statistical FACTS that support your contention of a meaningful transition.

[KaiserJeep]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Tanada', 'R')egarding the whole 'octane rating' thing. Most car engines built before say 1975 were made of cast iron and it was easy to increase compression by either making the piston shaft slightly longer or by turbocharging the engine. The higher the compression ratio the more efficiently the fuel gets burned and the more power you get out of it on a volume by volume basis. Then two things happened, the US government made it illegal to use cheap convenient tetra-ethyl lead in gasoline as an octane booster because we were all getting lead poisoning and it also clogs up the pollution control devices that eliminate much of the SMOG that was poisoning Denver, Colorado and Los Angeles, California. You can still make high octane fuel, but it ain't cheap anymore like it used to be. The second change was some clever engineers figured out that by reducing the construction weight of a car you could greatly reduce its lifetime fuel consumption. They did two major things, they removed the solid steel frame and replaced it with a thin stamped metal 'unibody' construction technique, and they replaced the cast iron engine block with cast aluminum that weighs 1/3rd as much per volume. Then because of the octane reduction they had to reduce the compression ratio of the engine to prevent knock and ping, and with a lower compression ratio they could make the engine block thinner and lighter without worry that it would crack.

Some liquid fuels have naturally high 'octane' ratings because it takes a LOT of compression to ignite them. Kerosene aka Diesel #1 and Road Diesel aka Diesel #2 are prime examples of this. However Ethanol the blending component in E-10 (gasohol) and E-85 has an octane rating well over 100. Being smart my kid brother switched the fuel system components in his turbocharged sports car to be E-85 compliant and saved a boatload of money by using E-85 in place of the 93 Octane premium fuel his car was 'designed' for. In fact anyone with an E-85 flex fuel vehicle would be doing themselves a huge favor by turbocharging the engine, that lets you get more energy out of the E-85 than you get at the wimpy standard 87 Octane compression ratio of 'regular unleaded'.

The Federal Government could pass a law next week requiring all new passenger vehicles to have a minimum octane rating of 90. The car makers would then moderately increase the compression ratio of the new model engines and the fuel companies would tweak the 'midgrade' gasoline formula to push it up from 89 octane to 90 octane. Most people would never even notice the difference unless they tried running their cars on 'regular 87' but the fuel efficiency would be slightly higher so the total fuel consumed by the newer cars would be slightly lower. So why don't they pass such a regulation? Because the 10 cent a gallon price difference would create a huge controversy because of the way our politics work in America.