[NEOPO]

Yes, once again I am helplessly tangled in a web of numbers and words ultimately leading to denial fear and rationalization....help.

Ok some numbers and theories:

Gasoline -
U.S. consumption - fluctuates around 8-10 million Gallons per day
lets average that at 9mil x 365 = approx 3.2 billion gallons per year

42 gallons per barrel of oil which can be refined into 20 gallons of gasoline or 42 x .47 = 19.74 - for convenience sake I use 20 gallons.

The US consumes 7.5+ Billion Barrels of oil Annually.

7.5 billion barrels of oil can be refined into 7.5bil barrels x.47= approx. 3.5 billion barrels of gas x 42 gallons per barrel = 147,000,000,000 gallons
thats 147 billion gallons!!!!

ok we use 3.2 yet can produce 147 - wheres the problem?
It seems like lack of effort and storage space is the culprit at the moment.

Ethanol and E85 is of interest.

The US produces or according to several websites can or will soon be producing approx. 4.3 billion gallons of ethanol.

Now I know that it would/will take quite an effort to convert to E85 yet there certainly seems to be enough ethanol to supplement our gasoline needs by the 85% mix once the fleet has been converted.
That in turn makes me curious about fords plans to convert to 50%+ gas/electric hybrids by 2010.
Why not E85/electric hybrids??
Will all these cars be E85 compatable also? I hope so.....
Why didnt the .gov help with the expansion of ethanol distribution???
There are 4 places in ohio where you can buy E85 yet only 2 are public - we called one today to ask the price and they said they could not give us the price but could say that E85 was 20% less then gas thus with the .50 government subsidy I figure they are selling E85 at the same price as gas minus the subsidy = $2.20 a gallon.
Our mini van is E85 yet its more then an hour away for a fill up!!!

Then theres this quote from a msn article:
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'I')n any case, even if ethanol production doubles to 7.5 billion gallons in 2012 — as called for the in the recent energy bill — that would represent only about 5 percent of the fuel consumed by U.S. motorists today.

[VMA131Marine]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('NEOPO', 'Y')es, once again I am helplessly tangled in a web of numbers and words ultimately leading to denial fear and rationalization....help.

Ok some numbers and theories:

Gasoline -
U.S. consumption - fluctuates around 8-10 million Gallons per day
lets average that at 9mil x 365 = approx 3.2 billion gallons per year

[SmokinJuan]

Your problem is right at the beginning of the post... according to my source (and i only checked one http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/cabs/usa.html) US gasoline consumtion is 9Mbbl/day, not 9Mgal... Sounds awfully similar to what you quoted. Check that site, search "gasoline" and you should get straight to the important stuff.
Run your figures again with that number.

[turmoil]

yes, lets fix these numbers:

US avg gas consumption = ~9,000,000 barrels per day

9 MMbpd * 42 gallons per barrel * 365 days = 137.97 billion gallons per year

US ethanol production in 2004 = 4.3 billion gallons that year

4.3 Billion gallons / 137.97 Billion gallons = 0.0311 = 3.11%

If we triple ethanol production and reduce demand by 1/3:

12.9 Billion gallons / 91.88 Billion gallons = 0.1404 = 14.04%

Not to mention that ethanol has negative EROEI...

[NEOPO]

doh!!!
whew for a second there I thought we werent screwed!!
yep we are still completely screwed!!!

No more slushies???
This basically means we are at "peak brain freeze" and frankly I for one am concerned!!!!


Thank you so kindly....... now tell me why I have chased my tail twice with gallons and barrels.
Is this simply whats left of my fear, denial and rationlization???
One last grasp at the illusion of security???
Over stimulated with information and disinformation alike?
Is this love baby - or is it - just - confusion??? thank you jimi

This isnt a rabbit hole - its a black hole magnet tar pit of death and dismay!!! run!!!

Is this how the hubble mistake was made?

Ok hmmmm wow thats alot of gasoline isnt it?
and wow hmmm that isnt much ethanol is it??

so the situation is at least 41 times worse then I was dreaming that it really was

so 42 x 3.2 billion gallons = 134,400,000,000 gallons which is near our refinement capacity limits and thats if all we did with 47% of our 7.5 and climbing billion barrels of oil yearly was refine it into gasoline 24/7/365

ethanol - 7.5 bgy divided by 134.4 bgy = 5.5% ok by 2012 even with subsidies.......!.!
bgy = billion gallons year.
I wanted to convert this to gallons since thats the unit of measure preferred by the government!!
Now I can relate to the people I speak PO with exactly why ethanol isnt the answer and again show just how huge the freakin problem is!!!

We are so screwed

I would not be offended if this thread was moved to the "ethanol - yeah right" section yet with so many new comers to this forum and the tendency to "dive right in" without searching or reading for relative topics......this thread serves its purpose.

How about a section called - "Numbers" or "The numbers game" or " how they f@#$ ya at the drive through of life"

I feel like a stupid monkey

[MrBill]

RE ethanol from corn or other biomass

Not only land. Calculate in the cost in terms of time & energy to plant and harvest the crop, plus transport it to the ethanol processing plant. Then the energy required to run the processing plant, produce ethanol and then distribute it back to retail outlets. Then you have soil degradation, soil salinity & erosion, plus the water used for irrigation, also a depleting resource. Anytime you have monoculture, you have a problem with pest, weeds and you have to add fertilizer. All either mined using energy or produced from fossil fuels. It is a tantalizing dream, but one that runs on taxpayer subsidies not market economics.

[MD]

confusion is the right word for this thread.

[aahala]

US ethanol production is almost exclusively from corn. About one in eight bushels of corn is consumed by ethanol, roughly the amount grown in
Iowa, the biggest corn state.

The federal tax treatment gives ethanol a subsidy of about 50 cents,
some of the ethanol producing states give an additional subsidy of
5-20 cents a gallon. These do not include the cost of the federal crop
production loan rate, which for corn is usually well above the actual cost
of production.

[MrBill]

Sugar prices are at record highs and yet I heard that Brazil was diverting more sugar cane to making ethanol? What's with that? I have not found any other news, but I suppose it is a) to support local growers, and b) to reduce their reliance on imported fossil fuels? Any ideas?

[MrBill]

http://blog.ianbicking.org/on-ethanol.html

This link had some interesting points comparing ethanol made from sugar cane in Brazil to that of corn in the USA. No verification if the info is accurate though?

[ubercrap]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('NEOPO', 'Y')es, once again I am helplessly tangled in a web of numbers and words ultimately leading to denial fear and rationalization....help.

Ok some numbers and theories:

Gasoline -
U.S. consumption - fluctuates around 8-10 million Gallons per day
lets average that at 9mil x 365 = approx 3.2 billion gallons per year

42 gallons per barrel of oil which can be refined into 20 gallons of gasoline or 42 x .47 = 19.74 - for convenience sake I use 20 gallons.

The US consumes 7.5+ Billion Barrels of oil Annually.

7.5 billion barrels of oil can be refined into 7.5bil barrels x.47= approx. 3.5 billion barrels of gas x 42 gallons per barrel = 147,000,000,000 gallons
thats 147 billion gallons!!!!

ok we use 3.2 yet can produce 147 - wheres the problem?
It seems like lack of effort and storage space is the culprit at the moment.

Ethanol and E85 is of interest.

The US produces or according to several websites can or will soon be producing approx. 4.3 billion gallons of ethanol.

Now I know that it would/will take quite an effort to convert to E85 yet there certainly seems to be enough ethanol to supplement our gasoline needs by the 85% mix once the fleet has been converted.
That in turn makes me curious about fords plans to convert to 50%+ gas/electric hybrids by 2010.
Why not E85/electric hybrids??
Will all these cars be E85 compatable also? I hope so.....
Why didnt the .gov help with the expansion of ethanol distribution???
There are 4 places in ohio where you can buy E85 yet only 2 are public - we called one today to ask the price and they said they could not give us the price but could say that E85 was 20% less then gas thus with the .50 government subsidy I figure they are selling E85 at the same price as gas minus the subsidy = $2.20 a gallon.
Our mini van is E85 yet its more then an hour away for a fill up!!!

Then theres this quote from a msn article:
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'I')n any case, even if ethanol production doubles to 7.5 billion gallons in 2012 — as called for the in the recent energy bill — that would represent only about 5 percent of the fuel consumed by U.S. motorists today.

[NEOPO]

bump - data please

So what are the limits of long term gasoline storage?

Better yet - what is the shelf life for ethanol, gasoline, diesel and other liquid fuels??

So what you are saying or not saying really is that we are screwed well beyond our wildest imagination?

[Dusk]

Hi Neopo, dont feel bad, I work with fuels and I still get tangled up with the gals, bbls, and something we call mike barrels in the Air Force. (thats 42,000 gals or a thousand barrels. But we call it mike not kilo...go figure.)
I think we are in trouble, but not complete end of the world stage like it seems to me that some on this forum almost are cheering for. My definition of that means complete throwback to the stone age. I don't think that will happen. A lot of people might die, but people die every day and have been for ever. But changes will happen that will make the world a nice place to live for the ones that survive it. Think how many of those millions of barrels of gasoline are flat wasted cause its cheap. Price goes up... waste will go down. No more trips to walmart for something trivial or to visit a friend 2 states over over the weekend. Economy might shrink, but so what. The anger over people not being able to do as they please with regards to there fuel use cause of price will cause anger, but I think it will also bring needed change.
As far as ethonal, well, my dad and uncle are farmers in Nebraska. I talked to him about the upcoming heating crisis the news says will happen this winter and was very surprised to hear that he is buying a heater that runs on corn. Not ethanol, but shelled corn. wtf? Turns out that corn is at such a low right now that people are actually burning it for heat instead of selling it. Now you said you felt weird looking at your numbers? I think I must have stepped into crazy town to live in a world where people starve, but food is burned for heat cause you cant sell it. So maybe we cant run the whole country on ethanol, but with conservation, a lot of changes to infrastructure (go nuke power!!) and a bushel of corn here and there, I think we'll be alright.