Not So Fast, Peak Oil

Iraqi oil production to delay Peak Oil by ten years or longer

Endless Oil
Technology, politics, and lower demand will yield a bumper crop of crude

"Only about 32% of the oil [in reserves] is produced," says Val Brock, Shell's head of business development for enhanced oil recovery. Shell estimates 300 billion barrels and maybe more might be squeezed out of existing fields, much of it once thought beyond retrieval. Peter Jackson, IHS Cambridge Energy Research Associates' London-based senior director for oil industry activity, has reviewed data from the world's biggest fields. His conclusion: 60% of their reserves remain available.

The fact that there's still oil for the taking is driving Shell and other majors to come up with new technologies, which are expensive to develop but worth it when crude is riding high. While the price has fallen considerably from the peak of $147 per barrel in 2008, it is still far above what many oilmen expected a few years ago. "You will see companies going into the deep water, going into the arctic, using the best technology," says Maugeri, who sees the oil industry as a dynamic system that responds rapidly to changes in the economic and political environment.

Even if the new technologies add just a few percentage points to the recovery rate, such gains add years to global supply and boost the industry's profits. So the technology of coaxing oil out of the ground is constantly improving. Heating up heavy oil, as at Schoonebeek, is one new trick. Companies can add heavy polymers to the water they blast into a production site to push more oil out; the polymers add weight to the water and increase the pressure on deposits. (Shell is trying such technology on the Marmul field in Oman.) Another tactic is to inject soap into the ground to break the surface tension that makes leftover oil cling to the rock.

Simple methods can help mature oil fields produce more and even uncover bigger reserves than imagined. A study of fields in Indonesia by IHS CERA found that it wasn't uncommon for them to produce more than double initial estimates. Petroleum engineers help the fields live longer just by drilling new wells or installing better pumps. "As a field ages, the operators learn more...that allows them to tweak their operations," explains Leta K. Smith, a Houston-based analyst for IHS CERA.

Sharp falls in production can be arrested. Output at Samotlor, Russia's largest field, was plummeting in the late 1990s. The field's owner, TNK-BP, formed in 2003, has since managed to boost production by a third. Adjusting the placement of the pumps in the wells yielded big gains, while three-dimensional seismic technology gave a better glimpse of the oil-bearing structures under the ground. _BusinessWeek

Squeezing more oil out of the ground

PDF Peak Oil Realities PDF

It takes time, work, intelligence, and an open-minded pursuit of truth, to break through the scams and the garbage to the most likely realities beneath. Most people are not equipped. But for those who are, some potential profit plays remain.

Another Algal Fuels Collaboration

“We believe that genetically modified algae provides the best, large-scale, sustainable solution to the multiple resource limitations the global economy is experiencing, providing high-quality alternatives to fossil fuels, petro-chemicals and protein sources without impacting arable land and water,” said Dr. Noam Gressel, co-founder and board member of TransAlgae. _Bioenergy

Genetic modification of micro-organisms is almost certain to transform the liquid fuels industry. Not overnight. Give it 20 years. But between now and 20 years from now, a lot of things will be happening that you may not hear about from the MSM. You may well wake up one morning and discover that everything has changed.

Endicott Biofuels, LLC, a Houston-based, next-generation biodiesel producer, and TransAlgae, Ltd., an algal biotechnology company, have signed a Memorandum of Understanding for the development of algae as a potential transportation fuel and renewable chemical feedstock source.


TransAlgae’s mission is to develop commercially viable algae strains for a variety of algae biomass growth platforms in order to deliver cost effective transportation fuels as well as other non-energy applications.

For the past year, Endicott has been involved in a fully flexible feedstock development program for the production of biodiesel, which includes algae oil-to-biodiesel commercialization. Among its future development plans are technologies that provide a higher degree of freedom for algae producers in algae strain selection and algae oil extraction for the production of biofuels. _Bioenergy

Algae can produce oil for fuel, but it also produces biomass that can be turned into fuels. Algae also makes good proteins for animal (including human) feed, and is used in the human cosmetics industry, among others. Most of the world's future plastics may be made from algal hydrocarbon production.

The monetary potential for tomorrow's algal tycoons is enormous -- into the trillions of 2010 US dollars. That is why billions of dollars of research goes into the nascent algal industry -- even though in 2010 algal oil is nowhere near competitive with fossil oils.

Micro-organisms are the future of liquid fuels. But we have to get to the future to enjoy it. That means we will have to create open access to all forms of energy today -- oil, coal, gas, kerogens, bitumens, nuclear ..... The energy starvation policies of Obama, Pelosi, Boxer, Salazar and the other incompetents in US government, will not get us there.

US Nuclear Power Stalled by Regulations

Six US power companies are trying to get the European Pressurized Reactor (EPR) approved by the US NRC. A Fresno, California group is making plans to build one or two EPR reactors in California's San Joaquin Valley. Very optimistic of them.

AREVA and Fresno Nuclear Energy Group (FNEG) have signed a Letter of Intent to formalize cooperation in the development of one or two EPR™ reactors in Central Valley (California, United States).


FNEG is a group of investors that wishes to acquire the EPR™ generation 3+ technology to provide an environmentally responsible source of electricity to further develop the agricultural industry within Central Valley.


...The two companies will work together on the initial development and permitting process. In 2010, AREVA and FNEG will begin a series of studies to identify the most feasible site for a new nuclear power plant in California.


Certification of the EPR™ reactor is currently underway in the United States and six power companies (Constellation, PPL, AmerenUE, Amarillo Power, AEHI and Duke Energy) have already chosen the EPR™ for a total of eight potential reactor construction projects. _Nuclear News

A San Antonio, Texas nuclear plant expansion project (South Texas Project) involving Toshiba (NINA), has been thrown into disarray due to many delays and cost overruns -- most of which are due to US DOE incompetence.

Meanwhile, a new Russian joint venture is attempting to commercialise a new small (100 MWe) factory built and fueled fast reactor.

It uses chemically inert heavy liquid metal coolant in a primary circuit entirely integrated into the reactor pressure vessel. The coolant increases from 345 °C to 495 °C on passage through the reactor core and this heat is transferred to a secondary circuit and used to drive a steam turbine. From a gross thermal power of 280 MWt the net output would be 100 MWe, although smaller models are also on the drawing board and the original submarine version produced 155 MWt.


The reactor unit would be factory assembled and shipped to site for installation inside a tank of water that would provide passive heat removal and radiation shielding. Uranium oxide enriched to 16.5% uranium-235 would be one fuelling option. Reloads would only be carried out every seven to eight years. _WNN

Construction continues on new Chinese nuclear plants at various locations -- as China takes economic growth more seriously than does the Obama - Pelosi reich.  

Fill 'Er Up With Starbucks -- Starbucks Oil

According to the U.S. Department of Energy, the U.S. imports an average of 3.5 billion barrels of oil a year, with a 10-year price average of nearly $50 a barrel.

"Roughly speaking, this means imported crude oil is a $173 billion-a-year industry," Starbuck said. "If biocrude could be substituted for this quantity at the average 10-year real price, then the potential market for biocrude would be $173 billion annually."

Starbuck said producing biocrude in the U.S. would also provide a more stable and secure supply chain, as opposed to oil produced in other parts of the world and then shipped to the United States.

Another plus — unlike ethanol produced from grains, fuel produced from algae can be stored in the same tanks, shipped through the same pipelines and run in the same engines as traditional fuel without any necessary modifications. It also takes less energy to refine.

Starbuck said if New Mexico could capture just 35 percent of an algal fuel industry, the potential for job creation could be enormous. Some of her models put potential employment in algal fuel and algal fuel-related companies in the hundreds of thousands, with potential tax revenue in the billions. _Starbuck

Yep, there are plenty of obstacles standing in the way of a $173 billion a year Starbucks oil industry. But the human mind is nothing if not a problem-solving machine.

Here is an interesting article about a new form of catalyst that may expand profit margins for biofuels significantly.

Here is a look at venture capital investment in alternative energies and fuels. Although down from 2008, the year 2009 saw the second highest VC investments in alt.energy in history.

If the Obama - Pelosi reich ever lets up on its carbon hysteria, we are likely to see a return to exponential growth in investment in alt.energy. Why? Because a healthy economy needs a lot of energy -- not Obama style energy starvation. The healthier the economy, the more investment in the technologies of the future.

If you try forcing the economy to do things your way -- as in a Soviet command economy -- you will reap failure and misery.

Solar Power News: Sooner or Later, Solar Breaks Out

Solar energy is too good, too vast, not to become an important energy player eventually. Orbital solar is best, but terrestrial solar will be important once the storage and cost problems are solved. A hybrid solar roofing "shingle" that collects both light and heat energy from the sun, might make a difference.

The broad concept of building a solar panel that is tough enough to act as a roof panel yet sensitive enough to capture as much of the sun's energy as possible is likely feasible, says David Ginger, an associate professor of chemistry at the University of Washington in Seattle. "Of course, putting all these ideas into the same package in a cost-effective manner is often more challenging than pitching the idea on paper, which is why you want clever engineers trying out new designs and then testing them in real-world environments," he adds.


And although this idea of "building-integrated photovoltaics" (BIPV) is not new, the Columbia-Weidlinger multilayered hybrid design is different from anything currently available to builders. SolarWorld AG in Germany, for example, sells a technology it calls Energyroof, which consists of panels covered with solar laminates that generate electricity but does not include a layer of thermoelectric material.


In October, The Dow Chemical Company announced its Powerhouse Solar Shingle, which the company says can be integrated into rooftops with standard asphalt shingle materials. These solar shingles, which feature thin-film copper indium gallium selenide (CIGS) photovoltaic cells, are expected to be available in limited quantities by mid-2010 and projected to be more widely available in 2011. In 2007, the DOE had given Dow $20 million in funding to develop building-integrated solar arrays for the residential and commercial markets. _SciAm

Solar thermal power holds more promise for large scale utility power generation, because heat can be more easily and cheaply stored than electricity. One interesting form of solar thermal uses the Stirling heat engine, which can run on relatively low levels of heat differential.

Stirling engines are significantly more efficient at converting sunlight into energy than most photovoltaic panels or concentrating solar power plants, whether parabolic trough or tower designs. The test units have reached 31 percent efficiency, compared to 16 percent for parabolic troughs and about 14-18 percent for PV panels in use today (though newer designs not yet on the market range from 24 to as high as 41 percent). _SciAm

It is easy to imagine a hybrid solar thermal plant which uses a tower to generate steam hot enough for combined cycle (gas turbine plus steam turbine) operation. The exhaust water from the steam turbine could drive a Stirling engine. So you have three cascading heat engines operating simultaneously. Then, after dark, stored heat can drive the Stirling engine well into the night to cover maximum peak times. The idea is to extract as much energy -- at the right times -- as possible.

The issue of heat storage is a different topic, but it is likely that heat storage will be more efficient than electrical storage for at least another 1 or 2 decades.

ClimateGate: The Biggest News Story of the Millenium

Climate Change and global energy policy are inextricably tied together by the governments of the developed world, the UN, the IPCC, and the global community of NGOs and environmental lobbies.  Not to mention Goldman Sachs and a wide array of financial groups that want to get in on the multi-trillion dollar carbon trading enterprise.  Under proposed climate change rules, trillions of dollars will be traded on carbon markets, and trillions more will be re-distributed to third world dictatorships from the economies of advanced nations.

It looks as if ClimateGate has arrived just in time to save the more open-minded populations from their own gullible downfall. Here are some facts:

ClimateGate files and expert analysis

Searchable ClimateGate Email Database

ClimateGate Primer

ClimateGate for dummies

Brief Summary of ClimateGate

Interesting historical background for ClimateGate

Wikipedia's own ClimateGate

ClimateGate.com

ClimateGate.TV

"Science" defends itself against ClimateGate

Engineering Tobacco Plants for Fuel

Researchers at Philadelphia's Thomas Jefferson University, have tweaked two genes in the tobacco plant, causing the tobacco leaves to produce over twice the amount of oil normally produced.

According to Vyacheslav Andrianov, Ph.D., assistant professor of Cancer Biology at Jefferson Medical College of Thomas Jefferson University, tobacco can generate biofuel more efficiently than other agricultural crops. However, most of the oil is typically found in the seeds � tobacco seeds are composed of about 40 percent oil per dry weight.

Although the seed oil has been tested for use as fuel for diesel engines, tobacco plants yield a modest amount of seeds, at only about 600 kg of seeds per acre. Dr. Andrianov and his colleagues sought to find ways to engineer tobacco plants, so that their leaves expressed the oil.

"Tobacco is very attractive as a biofuel because the idea is to use plants that aren't used in food production," Dr. Andrianov said. "We have found ways to genetically engineer the plants so that their leaves express more oil. In some instances, the modified plants produced 20-fold more oil in the leaves."

Typical tobacco plant leaves contain 1.7 percent to 4 percent of oil per dry weight. The plants were engineered to overexpress one of two genes: the diacyglycerol acytransferase (DGAT) gene or the LEAFY COTYLEDON 2 (LEC2) gene. The DGAT gene modification led to about 5.8 percent of oil per dry weight in the leaves, which about two-fold the amount of oil produced normally. The LEC2 gene modification led to 6.8 percent of oil per dry weight. _Eurekalert

An interesting fallacy in the above report: Andrianov claims that using plants not used in food production for biofuels is somehow "better" than using food plants for biofuels. In actuality, if one wants to maximise food production, one must make sure that he produces his biofuels plants on land that is unsuitable for food crop production, AND utilises only equipment, personnel, fertiliser, water, and any other production materials that could not have otherwise been used for food production.

But since the US has long produced significant excess food, and since less than half the arable land in the US is being used for food production, and since the productivity of food farming (per land used) seems to improve virtually every year, allowing for weather fluctuations -- the food vs. fuels controversy has always been more than a little bit over-hyped.

When humans starve, it is virtually always due to political factors. Warring factions that deny their opponents access to food aid -- generally shipped at great expense in massive amounts. Without such unscrupulous practises by warlords and dictators, starvation would be virtually unknown.

As for the cost of commodities, the 2007 to 2008 spike in oil prices had far more to do with high costs of grain than did biofuels production. Food production in the US expands according to demand, which helps to regulate price. When more maize is used for multiple purposes, more maize is grown.

Al Fin has always preferred 2nd and 3rd generation (non-food) biofuels to biofuels from food. That is because the feedstock for 2nd and 3rd generation biofuels can be more plentifully and cheaply grown on more marginal soils, often using brackish or even salt water. The hysteria over "food for fuels" is greatly misplaced.

Personal Nuclear Energy on a Nano Scale

Bringing nuclear energy to the personal level may take a decade or two. Bringing nuclear energy to the nano-scale may take even longer. Brian Wang brings us a discussion on nuclear powered nano-bots to be implanted into your body, to produce the ATP energy molecule -- so you won't have to eat! Or perhaps more realistically, so you can eat anything you want without suffering for it.

Here’s how these would work: the only reason people eat is to replace the energy they expend walking around, breathing, living life, etc. Like all creatures, we take energy stored in plant or animal matter. Freitas points out that the isotope gadolinium-148 could provide much of the fuel the body needs. But a person can’t just eat a radioactive chemical and hope to be healthy, instead he or she would ingest the gadolinium in the form of nanorobots. The gadolinium-powered robots would make sure that the person’s body was absorbing the energy safely and consistently. Freitas says the person might still have to take some vitamin or protein supplements but because gadolinium has a half life of 75 years, the person might be able to go for a century or longer without a square meal.

...“Nutribots” floating through the bloodstream would allow people to eat virtually anything, a big fatty steak for instance, and experience very limited weight or cholesterol gain. The nutribots would take the fat, excess iron, and anything else that the eater in question did not want absorbed into his or her body and hold onto it. The body would pass the nurtibots, and the excess fat, normally out of the body in the restroom. _NextBigFuture

Implantable nanobots could theoretically perform any number of vital functions for humans. To learn more see here (via Brian Wang), or follow other links you can find at the NBF article linked above.

Of course by the time we reach this level of nanotechnology, we will probably not be worrying very much about food scarcity, peak energy, peak resources, overpopulation, carbon catastrophe, or any other "crisis du jour" that occupies popular attention these days.

If we can make our own nanobots at home that can provide us with the goods and services of the most affluent society -- at virtually no cost to ourselves -- it will be safe to say that the age of scarcity is over.

Biomass Substitutes for Coal

Several US coal-fired power plants are learning to co-fire biomass with the coal. The long-term goal is to substitute biomass for coal altogether. One Ohio project intends to retrofit a coal plant to run on 100% biomass.

The biggest problem with the plan is that it is not designed to capture waste heat. In other words, for every "tree's worth of energy" the plant recovers in electricity, 3 or 4 trees are being wasted, producing heat that is not recovered or used. That is a pathetic waste of resources, regardless of how economic it may seem in the short term -- considering government incentives, mandates, and carbon rules. Combined heat and power (CHP) provides both electricity and useful heat. Designers must learn to integrate the more efficient approach into their plans.

Converting a coal-fired power plant into one that uses biomass is precisely what First Energy plans to do. Last April the utility announced plans to repower its coal-fired R.E. Burger Plant Units 4 and 5 using biomass. Ultimately, the plan is for the 312 MW plant to be powered by up to 100 percent biomass. However, the plant also is being designed with co-firing up to 20 percent coal.

...When complete, the Burger plant will be among the largest biomass power plants in the U.S. Since a project of this size hasn’t been done in the United States, challenges do exist, said Durbin. While the company already has in place equipment and systems to monitor particulates and nitrogen oxide emissions, it will need to solve a number of problems before getting the project off the ground. One problem is storage.

“Coal can get wet, get snowed on,” said Durbin. By contrast, biomass needs to stay dry. Durbin said the company plans to source biomass much in the same way it sources coal: from the best supplier. That may involve using wood chips and/or waste wood and processing it in a manner similar to the way coal is processed, or it may involve sourcing pellets. It’s also possible the company would use organic material such as switchgrass. “We are still working through the logistics,” said Durbin.

...For now, First Energy Generation plans to use the biomass to produce electricity alone and not harvest waste heat for cogeneration or combined heat and power (CHP). And that’s a problem, according to Dan Richter, professor of soils and forest ecology at Duke University.

“If we burn wood for electricity only, about three to four logs need to be burned to recover the energy contained in one. If heat and electricity are recovered with advanced wood combustion (AWC) technology, we can capture three to four times the energy that is recovered when burning wood solely for electricity,” he said.

Richter said AWC technology is widely deployed in Europe with plants achieving up to 90 percent efficiencies from burning biomass. Interestingly, four of the five plants that First Energy Generation engineers visited in Europe are combined heat and power (CHP) plants, even though the Ohio plant will generate electricity only.

Richter and a consortium of experts in the forestry and energy industry believe that burning wood solely for electricity wastes sizeable amounts of thermal energy.

“When we do calculations on how much wood is available in the nation and we look at potential supplies for energy we find that there’s just not enough of it to waste,” he said. “But if we can use it efficiently — capturing 70, 80, 90 percent [of the embodied energy in wood] — then wood does become a pretty interesting source of renewable energy that the country isn’t really aware of yet.” _Bioenergy

There is nothing wrong with co-firing coal and biomass. Using gasification technologies -- such as integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) -- you can utilise even dirty coal, without producing significant pollution in the exhaust.

The biggest hangups to using new technology, are government rules, regulations, mandates, and incentives -- most of which lead away from economic efficiencies altogether.

Piezoelectric Tree Harvests Breeze Power

Imagine all the energy moving through the leaves of a large oak or pine. Have you ever tried to devise a way to tap into the power of a breeze using the leaves of a tree? Cornell researchers have devised a "piezo tree", an artificial tree-like structure with piezoelectric "leaves." But don't expect to power your house from just one tree.

Researchers at Cornell University have created an energy harvesting "piezo-tree" based on the fluttering of leaves where synthetic leaves are connected to a piezoelectric stem. The device is able to convert the energy in wind into electric power whilst remaining light, low-cost, and easily scaled.

In the prototype, the flexible plate and film are driven to oscillate just as a flag or leaf might flap in the wind. The flapping motion is attributed to instability of the aero-elastic system. When creating the piezo-tree, researches used the flexible piezoelectric material Polyvinylidene Fluoride (PVDF) as the basic component, as it could withstand unpredictable wind strength. The basic design is to clamp one edge of PVDF element to a cylinder bluff body and leave the other edge free. When the wind crosses this bluff body, it will lead to a vortex shedding and the periodic pressure difference will drive the piezo-leaf to bend in the downstream of the air wake, synchronously. AC signal is collected from the flapping piezo-leaf, which is working on a periodic bending model, and the electrical energy is stored in a capacitor after rectifying it with a full-wave bridge. _EnergyHarvestingJournal_via_Ecofriend

The project is at the level of 100 pico watt, but has come up with multiple ideas to increase the output by orders of magnitude.

Of course, if you want an artificial tree that is truly functional, why not design it to concentrate CO2 (and turn it into fuel), condense and accumulate pure water for use (and tap into aquifers as well), harvest energy from wind AND sun, and provide multi-functional communications infrastructure (omni-antenna transceiver) -- plus a built-in docking station for robotic groundskeepers and maintenance robots.

How Refineries Can Save Between 6% and 48% Energy Cost

Oil refineries can save between 6% and 48% of their energy costs of refining, suggests new research from Purdue. The researchers studied the sequence of distillation processes, and discovered 70 sequences (out of a total of 6,000) that were more energy efficient than the current sequences used by industry. This represents a significant cost savings, and a potential competitive advantage for refiners who can adapt these findings to the industrial scale.

"Separations are a huge part of what chemical plants do," Agrawal said. "Improving efficiency by only a few percentage points translates into major savings. For every 100 barrels of oil distilled, nearly two barrels go into supplying energy for distillation. That's a lot of oil."

Crude petroleum is fed into the system, heated and vaporized. Vapor rises up the first column, and the product is collected in a condenser at the top. The process is repeated in additional columns, with the number of columns depending on how many components are to be separated.

But the distillation is more energy efficient depending on the order in which the columns are operated.

"There are many ways to arrange the columns," Agrawal said.

Shah created a computer algorithm that identifies all of the possible sequences and then determines which require the least heat and energy. The Purdue researchers used their new technique to determine there are nearly 6,000 possible sequences for the four columns used in petroleum distillation.

"Once we know all of the possible ways they can be arranged, then we can tell you which ones have the potential to be the most energy efficient," Agrawal said.

Petroleum refineries have been using the same sequence for about 75 years, and it is the most energy efficient of the sequences known to industry, the Purdue researchers confirmed using their new method.

The researchers also determined, however, that 70 of the new sequences identified have potential to consume less energy than the sequence now used by industry. Those 70 sequences range from being 6 percent to 48 percent more energy efficient than the method currently in use. _SD

Choren, Air Liquide Team Up for French BTL

An ambitious new French BTL (biomass to liquids) project will be pushing the envelope of full-chain BTL production:

The Bure Saudron pilot will demonstrate a complete BTL production chain: gathering and conditioning of the biomass, gasification, gas processing, and conversion to synthetic fuel via the Fischer-Tropsch process. It is intended provide the experience necessary for the establishment of a BTL sector, both for process integration techniques and for the definition of a regional economic model. This will be the first production unit of its kind in France.

The pilot plant will use some 75,000 tonnes per year of forest and local agricultural residue to produce about 23,000 tonnes/year of second-generation biofuel (diesel, kerosene and naptha).

Currently, a limitation of BTL processing is the mass yield of the end products. The Bure Saudron project will experiment with a novel solution to increase process efficiency—the ratio of hydrogen to carbon monoxide generated during the synthesis stage of the fuel will be greatly enhanced by the external input of hydrogen. This innovation will be a world first, according to CEA.

This first phase involves the detailed design studies and is under contract with the CNIM group (Constructions Industrielles de la Méditerranée) as prime contractor, and in partnership with Air Liquide, Choren, SNC Lavalin, Foster Wheeler-France and MSW Energy.

Air Liquide will coordinate some of the technical engineering operations and process steps downstream, from gasification through final biofuel upgrading. Air Liquide will also provide oxygen and hydrogen. Oxygen is a required component of the gasification process, and the hydrogen will be used to enhance the quantity and quality of the synthetic fuel produced. Choren is providing the gasification technology. _GCC

The French BTL project intends to grow its own biomass and perform its own gasification and chemical synthesis. Other BTL projects aim to buy biomass from contracted providers or off the open market. It will take several years for the biomass market to develop and mature in terms of quality control and guaranteed delivery. Any carbonaceous mass will do -- as Oynklent Green [OTC:OYNK] very well knows. ;-)

Hydrogen is likely to prove useful in many ways to the biofuels enterprise. Hydrogen gas is intelligently used by Neste in making its advanced biodiesel product. Adding hydrogen gas to a biomass gasification process to increase yield is another use. The French will use excess nuclear capacity during off hours to produce the hydrogen for use in the above project.

Iraq Blooms, Venezuela Crashes

Iraq plans to quadruple oil production, throwing OPEC into a frenzy.

Iraq aims for 12 million barrels a day -- Iran is concerned.

The world is already over-producing oil, in terms of current low demand. If Iraq carries through on its promise to increase production to 10 million barrels a day or higher, other oil-producing countries will be faced with reduced prices on the world market for their products.

Venezuela is already faced with a default on its sovereign debt of $90 billion. In fact, Venezuela is the nation most likely to go deadbeat on its debts. That may be surprising to those who have noticed how Hugo Chavez has attempted to use his nation's vast oil resources as a political weapon.

A default may make it more difficult for Chavez to pay for his expensive new military he wants to acquire from Russia and China. His plans to rule all of Latin America by placing friendly dictators as heads of state in Central and South America may also be delayed.

Implications for "Peak Oil": Iraq's rush to increase production will call into question the claims of several Peak Oil marketing scammers, who say that world oil peaked in 2005. Of course, almost everything in the real world calls those claims into question. Fortunately, Peak Oil true believers live in their own virtual world, which reflects inward upon itself recursively.

Oil Dropping to $30 a Barrel? Stranger Things . . . .

Fossil fuel prices are just about to nose dive. Massive new supplies of energy are coming on stream worldwide. Shale gas has flipped the United States from gas importer to gas surplus. Liquid natural gas (LNG) supplies from Qatar, Algeria and Russia are flooding European and Asian markets. Ethanol production in the US is outstripping demands.

Huge new oil fields in Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Brazil and Ghana will cause an intermediate-term surge in crude oil production. Iraq alone will be producing 5 million more barrels of oil per day within just five years; Brazil will become an oil exporting nation. _ Report_via_BiofuelsDigest

The price of oil can rise or fall for many reasons. The above report discusses falling oil prices based upon rising supplies. The discussion below also highlights the value of the US dollar as an important mover of oil prices.

First, we are seeing signs all over the world of a tightening in monetary policy. From Chinese real estate loan restrictions to actual rate rises in Norway and Australia, and even in the US there is now talk of reining in the stimulus as the economy recovers.
Faking growth?

Secondly, there are increasing question marks over the real strength of emerging market economies. Have they just been faking it for 2009? Stagnant petrol sales in China, for example, hardly square with the reported rip-roaring growth rates.

And certainly much of the government money pumped into China, India and Brazil has gone into inflating stock market and property bubbles of dangerous proportions. Take away the new liquidity and this will implode taking the real economy with it, ask Dubai.

Third, the US dollar appears to have bottomed out and now seems to be on an uptrend (see this article). All commodities are priced in dollars, so when the dollar strengthens then commodity prices fall.

And perhaps a fourth reason to think oil prices might be lower in 2010 is that global demand is still very weak as a result of the impact of the recession on GDP which will now take several years to recover to former levels, even assuming the recession does not turn out to be a double-dipper. _SeekingAlpha

The situation is extremely fluid, and vulnerable to any number of unanticipated events that may occur in an unstable geopolitical environment.

A lot of people stand to profit from "political peak oil" -- the artificial scarcity of fossil fuels due to the actions of political entities such as the Obama - Pelosi reich of the US. Every action the US reich has taken regarding energy has resulted in the decreased availability of fossil fuels -- particularly domestic fuels. Carbon hysteria is one of the main arms of political peak oil. The reich's EPA has acted to impose extortionate penalties on the use and development of fossil fuel resources. Obama's desperate lunge for legacy at Copenhagen reveals his grim intent to hamstring US energy resources and industrial power.

Deflation can turn to inflation of a killing kind, with just the right turns of the screw. Artificial resources scarcity -- as in political peak oil -- can play a pivotal role in a long term economic depression. That can only lead to greater global instability and bloodshed.

Only a change of government -- a return to constitutional safeguards and checks on government power -- can bring the US and the rest of the world up out of this deepening quagmire.

How Long Does it Take to Build a Nuclear Reactor?

According a spokesman at the Nuclear Energy Institute, it takes ten years to build a new nuclear reactor in the US.

A single nuclear power plant takes at least 10 years to build in the U.S., says Paul Genoa, director of policy development for the Nuclear Energy Institute. _SciAm

But Mr. Genoa is referring to a standard double reactor design of about 1 GW each, constructed on site. What about small modular reactors that can be constructed in a factory, and shipped to your site -- whether on land, underground, on a floating platform or ship, or in a remote polar or mountain location?

The Hyperion nuclear reactor is one example of such small reactors which can be factory-built.

“We have customer commitments for over a hundred units already. We’re going to be very busy! In fact, we’re now scheduling deliveries out to 2018-2020 even though we expect to go to market in the 2013-2014 timeframe.”

Hyperion plans to build three manufacturing facilities: one in the USA to support the North and Latin America markets, and a third in Asia, probably Japan. Although the firm hasn’t made a decision on where its UK plant will be located, it’s likely to be near existing nuclear facilities, which are clustered around the Sellafield site in Cumbria, northeast England.

It would take a matter of months to build such a reactor in-factory, and a matter of weeks to construct the rudimentary infrastructure required at the final plant site. Once government regulators get up to speed on the new, small factory-built reactors, approval should be speeded up appreciably.

Brian Wang's NextBigFuture is one of the best places to stay informed on issues of nuclear energy -- both fission and fusion.

Notable Energy Briefs

Switchgrass is twice as efficient as maize for producing biofuels

Switchgrass can yield 1,000 gallons of fuel per acre planted, while miscanthus (elephant grass) is projected to yield 1,250 gallons per acre. By comparison, corn yield only 400 gallons of ethanol per acre, and even sugarcane only 650. Oil palms produce 610 gallons of biodiesel per acre planted, while coconut yields only 276 gallons per acre. (Figures for ethanol come from the North Carolina Cooperative Extension Service, for biodiesel from the National Sustainable Agriculture Information Service.)

Residential fuel cells for producing home electricity, heat, and hot water, are coming to Japan. Initial models will run on natural gas. Methanol fuel cells will come later.

Cyclone Power Technologies Inc. has agreed to develop its novel biomass-burning external combustion engines for China.

British Columbia company to produce Dimethyl Ether (DME) diesel substitute, from forest waste. DME can also be made from black liquor wasteproduct from paper / pulp mills, and other low quality carbonaceous waste.

Boston College researchers are investigating new "hot electron" technology for improving efficiencies of photovoltaics

China prepares to steal copy 3G nuclear technology from Westinghouse AP1000 reactors -- before the reactors are even built! Westinghouse - Toshiba won their license to build 4 AP1000 reactors in China only after they agreed to transfer the license for much of the technology to China.

Government energy projects such as Lawrence Livermore's laser fusion National Ignition Facility (and mega-project ITER) continue to devour enormous amounts of funding with projected practical payoffs receding ever into the future. Meanwhile, small projects such as IEC and Vancouver-based General Fusion, have to bow and scrape for meager funding.

Robert Rapier Stands Up for Bio-Energy

Robert Rapier is an engineer who has often expressed skepticism about various biofuels approaches and particular biofuels companies. But the logic in favour of biomass is very difficult to dispute. I am posting a brief excerpt, but you need to read Robert's entire article to get a feeling for how frustrated Robert is with the biomass-bashers. (almost as frustrated as Al Fin)

...it is true that wood gasification plants can have lots of particulate emissions, that is not an inherent quality. You can put the same pollution controls on them that you can on coal plants. So once again a bad starting assumption leads to a sweeping, but false conclusion.

In summary, this was a very one-sided view that presented the worst extremes as more or less the status quo for biomass utilization. It is true that you can do things a right way or a wrong way. Water is healthy and I need it to live, but if I drink too much it can kill me. Taking a page from this article, I suppose I should avoid water from now on, as it has the potential to kill me.

For those quoted in the article, I hope they don't freeze to death in the dark as the biomass they are so opposed to rots and releases its CO2 anyway. As I tell people sometimes, if you are opposed to everything, then prepare to be happy with the status quo. _RSquared

Rapier is an engineer who is focused on the matter at hand -- hot to make things work efficiently. He is not a generalist and does not have a truly global view, except in the narrow areas that he specialises in. But he is honest in expressing his impressions as he sees them.

Too many intellectuals without technical training (such as the ones that Robert bashes above) have latched onto an initial impression that "biofuels are bad" and have decided that bioenergy cannot help alleviate energy shortages. Time will prove them wrong, but in the meantime, they are slowing down society's abililty to flexibly face energy supply fluctuations.

PDFs and PPTs from October 2009 IEC Conference Online

The October 2009 conference on IEC (Bussard) Fusion has put its presentations online in either PDF or PPT form for public access. The even took place on 12-13 Oct 2009 in Madison, Wisconsin. Researchers from Japan, Australia, and the US were among the presenters.

H/T to M. Simon (other interesting items at this link)

Brian Wang has a fascinating post linking IEC fusion with an intriguing plasma space drive. Certainly if fusion reactors that small and light could be made to work -- and linked to advanced plasma drive engines -- most of the solar system would suddenly come within reach from Earth orbit.

Sugar Cane Waste into Useful Energy etc.

Cetrel, the largest provider of environmental solutions for the manufacturing industry in Latin America, and Novozymes, the world’s leading producer of industrial enzymes, today announced a research partnership to turn sugarcane waste into green energy.

Using Cetrel’s know-how in waste-stream treatment and Novozymes’ biotech expertise, the partners aim to enable sugar and ethanol production plants in Brazil to turn bagasse, the waste from sugarcane production, into biogas using enzymes. The biogas can be used to produce electricity for production facilities, and surplus electricity can be sold to the market through the electric grid. _Checkbiotech.org

Turning waste cellulose into useful energy changes the economics of human energy use considerably. Growing biomass on marginal soils independent of food crops will change the economics even more. Learning to produce fuels from waste, biomass, and low quality carbon sources using custom designed microbes will turn current energy thinking on its head.

In Washington, the United States Energy Information Administration released Annual Energy Outlook 2010 with projections now extended through through 2035.

Among its findings, a “Declining Reliance on Imported Liquid Fuels: Total U.S. consumption of liquid fuels, including both fossil liquids and biofuels, grows from 19 million barrels per day in 2008 to 22 million barrels per day in 2035. Biofuels account for all of the growth, as consumption of petroleum-based liquids is essentially flat. As a result, reliance on imported oil declines significantly over the next 25 years.” _Biofuelsdigest

Current analysts and pundits appear to have absolutely no idea of the capacity of bioenergy to change things.

Peak Oil Just Shifted A Lot Further On the Horizon

Biomass could fuel 65% of world's energy consumption by 2050

12 billion gallon a year oil feedstock going uncaptured

Jatropha may not grow well in the continental US, but it can be shipped in easily enough

Dimethyl Ether from biomass:  Good prospects for replacing diesel

Brazil:  Abundant bio-gas from bagasse and polypropylene plastics from sugarcane

Japanese buying into Algae oil enterprise Origin Oil Inc

Biomass to fuels using existing oil refineries!

Over at the oil drum website Gail the Actuary is explaining to all the faithful why oil hasn't shot up to $200 a barrel yet -- 5 years after oil supposedly peaked!  If you are at all familiar with the doomseekers of peak oil, you understand how difficult it is to have so few tangible evidences of peak oil to point to.  Like believers in catastrophic carbon climate warming who wake up to find that temperatures have been going down instead of up.  It's all very hard on a true believer.

The entire EROI spiel is getting a bit threadbare, once realities of economics begin interfering with the dogma.  How pathetic, when the one thing in life that makes one special, is that deep and abiding wish for a catastrophic collapse of civilisation! 

Al Fin engineers and energy workers believe in innovation, and the economics of the market.  Heavy-handed governments -- like the Obama / Pelosi reich -- tend to clog up the works.  No drilling!  No mining!  No development of this rich energy field or that one!  No new nuclear plants.  No new refineries.  No!  No!   No!   And the fools wonder why the economic situation is so slow to recover.

Peak oil is wrong for the simple reason that production is still extremely dependent upon investment and technology.  In the oil rich countries of the Persian Gulf, Russia, Venezuela, etc, political factors of nationalisation and neglectful maintenance upkeep added to poor application of technology, have kept production artificially low.  Equipment rusts and breaks down, and production drops.  Not to mention that the dictators, kings, sheikhs, etc. can live quite well and luxuriously on relatively low production -- despite what is in the fields. The people suffer from bad leadership, but the leaders live well.

It is outside of the oil dictatorships that technology is extracting from wells many times the original reserves -- and continue doing so. 

Conventional oil is still abundant, with much flexibility of production with more intelligent attention given to the huge oil fields remaining.

Unconvention oil is even more abundant:  oil shale, oil sands, heavy oils, coal to liquid, gas to liquid, etc.

Sometime in the next twenty years, bio-fuels will begin to have an impact which will only grow.

Nuclear energies such as modular fission, liquid fluoride thorium fission, and perhaps fusion and something like BlackLight Power, could well start to provide large quantities of electricity and production heat.

Other alternative energies may eventually work out -- if utility-scale power storage and load leveling ever become affordable.

The main shortage is the shortage of human ingenuity.  If human governments ever addressed that shortage honestly,  there might be no meaningful shortages, and no more big governments.