Torygraph: Looming crisis for the Fed.

lostinrates

Dithering_Dad wrote: »

It's because oil is so damned cheap (if you ignore the tax our lovely government add onto it). I worked in Saudi and the guy I was working alongside told me that their problem is water, everytime they drilled a borehole looking for water, they'd find oil. The problem isn;t so much with finding the oil, its with pumping it out, refining and distributing it fast enough to keep up with demand.

As oil becomes increasingly expensive, it'll make more sense to start using these other technologies.

Its been even cheape in US and yet they have had a far larger range of hybrid cars and made more prototypes of electric vehicles too

moanymoany

The full Peakoil article is a very persuasive scientific read. It is not the destruction of Western Society - but it will make a very uncomfortable situation.

An extract from the synopsis.

' Because the U.S. is highly dependent on imported oil for transportation, food production, industry, and residential heating, the nation will experience the impacts of declining oil supplies sooner and more severely than much of the world. North American natural gas production has peaked, importation of natural gas is limited, and the U.S. faces shortages of natural gas within a few years. These shortages threaten residential heating supplies, industrial production, electric power generation, and fertilizer production. Because U.S. coal production peaked in 2002 (in terms of energy provided by coal), the U.S. will experience significantly higher coal and electric prices in future years. The U.S. government is unprepared for the multiple consequences of Peak Oil, Peak Natural Gas, and Peak Coal. Multiple crises will cripple the nation in a gridlock of ever-worsening problems. '

I've read some of your posts DD and I know some of your views. I think you take an extremely simplistic view here - read the full article it looks at many of the things you bring up.

Growing oil and using old chip oil is okay as far as it goes. However, growing oil takes land away from food production and cannot be seen as a viable alternative for more than the fringe user. The 'no car' family is a far more likely consequence that cars run on electricity or hydrogen or any other alternative fuel.

There is also a lot of oil in the ground, but the cost of getting to it and the cost of refining is is very high. The journey of a litre from the Canadian wilderness to Tesco's pump is a very long and difficult one. It's also likely that countries may well want to hang on to their oil, money in the bank as it were.

adr0ck

moanymoany wrote: »

There is also a lot of oil in the ground, but the cost of getting to it and the cost of refining is is very high. The journey of a litre from the Canadian wilderness to Tesco's pump is a very long and difficult one. It's also likely that countries may well want to hang on to their oil, money in the bank as it were.

the journey from the desert to tesco's pump is also a long one

Dithering_Dad

lostinrates wrote: »

Its been even cheape in US and yet they have had a far larger range of hybrid cars and made more prototypes of electric vehicles too

That's probably as a result of the tough anti-polution laws in California. Imagine how fast things would move if fuel became as expensive in the US as it is in the UK. Washington would be besieged by SUV drivers demanding action.

p.s. hydrogen has such a bed rep because of the airship disasters in the 20s. Perhaps we should take their solution and make helium fuel cells? Much safer!

lostinrates

Dithering_Dad wrote: »

That's probably as a result of the tough anti-polution laws in California. Imagine how fast things would move if fuel became as expensive in the US as it is in the UK. Washington would be besieged by SUV drivers demanding action.

Absolutely I believe that is the source of it (California), but thats key too...money is not the only spur here. Interestingly they did have quite a few hybrid SUVs I believe, (I can't quite jog that bit of my memory today to provide any more accurate info on that)

Its interesting that ALL my US friends who drive moan every email about fuel costs, and I remind them what ours are to make them shudder. :cool:

moanymoany

adr0ck wrote: »

the journey from the desert to tesco's pump is also a long one

But flat, the oil is easily pumped out of the ground and is also easily transferred from well to tanker.

adr0ck

moanymoany wrote: »

But flat, the oil is easily pumped out of the ground and is also easily transferred from well to tanker.

yes but now we have a high oil price to help

moanymoany

lostinrates wrote: »

Absolutely I believe that is the source of it (California), but thats key too...money is not the only spur here. Interestingly they did have quite a few hybrid SUVs I believe, (I can't quite jog that bit of my memory today to provide any more accurate info on that)

Its interesting that ALL my US friends who drive moan every email about fuel costs, and I remind them what ours are to make them shudder. :cool:

Dh works with the Americans and spends a fair amount of time there. In the USA a super-economical car does 30 mpg! Their lifestyles are far more geared to cheap fuel than ours.

Dithering_Dad

moanymoany wrote: »

The full Peakoil article is a very persuasive scientific read. It is not the destruction of Western Society - but it will make a very uncomfortable situation.

The US has had appallingly cheap oil for decades, so if there is an adjustment due to their reliance on foreign oil stocks, then at first it would merely bring them in line with the UK and Western Europe.

In many ways the UK is a microcosm of what will happen in the US. We're no longer a net oil/natural gas producer and our fuel & heating costs are going through the roof. You can see the shift occuring now - young people priced out of cars and onto scooters/motorbikes, second car families changing into single car families, gas guzzlers being exchanged for diesels & smaller engined city cars. The same will happen in the US, though they have further to go to get where we are already.

My prediction will be that as heating costs rise, then it'll become viable for utilities to start piping hot water peoples houses rather than people having individual gas boilers. This heat can be by-products of industry or from power stations (no more cooling towers blotting the landscape). This is already popular in Denmark.

It'll be a gradual movement away from Oil & Gas, not because we've run out of it but because it's more expensive than the alternatives.

Perhaps we'll eventually close down the out of town shopping centres and return to the highstreet, people won't commute to work as far and we'll have communities again, where neighbours know each other! Wow, rather than the death of society, we could reclaim it.

Phew. How exciting is that!

I sometimes think I'm a bit too optimistic for this particular forum.

lostinrates

moanymoany wrote: »

Dh works with the Americans and spends a fair amount of time there. In the USA a super-economical car does 30 mpg! Their lifestyles are far more geared to cheap fuel than ours.

Accepted, (as a person who has lived in America, the spouse of someone whose family live in America, and who works for an American firm;) ). The californian eco car bubble is specific, but tremedously more advannced a market than ours!