Hey generali I don't agree with your signature

Mistermeaner

On the basis that even if oil as a primary energy source is displaced by other forms of cheaper / cleaner energy oil will still be widely used for the plethora of raw materials it provides. Demand for the products that are produced from these will not go away.

Plenty on the net at large but quick and easy link as way of back up.

http://www.wintershall.com/en/company/oil-and-gas/oil-can-do-more.html

HAMISH_MCTAVISH

Gets popcorn...

cells

ggb1979 wrote: »

On the basis that even if oil as a primary energy source is displaced by other forms of cheaper / cleaner energy oil will still be widely used for the plethora of raw materials it provides. Demand for the products that are produced from these will not go away.

Plenty on the net at large but quick and easy link as way of back up.

http://www.wintershall.com/en/company/oil-and-gas/oil-can-do-more.html

A lot of the feedstock for the plastics industry is now derived from gas not oil. Or rather ethane which is a byproduct of both oil and gas.

in fact the UKs biggest chemical plant up in Scotland is gearing up to buy lots of ethane from the USA as the wet shale fields have given rise to an excess of cheap ethane.

and I would guess that less than 2% of the worlds oil gets used in any other way than being burnt so with that regard I don't think you can catch him out

cells

Having said all that his 30 year time frame is definitely wrong. Oil use will likely be higher in the year 2050 than it was in the year 2000.

Even in the year 2100 I would wager the world will be a significant oil user. 2200 is probably a whole different story

System

The stone age didn't come to an end anyway. There is still a big demand for stones, for building houses and roads for example.
In fact the industry has taken off since the days when all people could do with stones was bash each other with them. Different kinds of stones are now exploited for the various useful minerals and metals they contain, and some have become very valuable either as gemstones or for rare but vital trace metals.
The bronze age too is still with us, in bearings for example.

All that has happened is that technology has developed, and new uses have been found for things that previously only supported very primitive human settlements.

Mistermeaner

Agree re gas (and shale particularly) but I read the signature as being about 'oil' in the general term of which gas and shale is part (not just traditional liquid crude).

cells

ggb1979 wrote: »

Agree re gas (and shale particularly) but I read the sis being about 'oil' in the general term of which gas and shale is part (not just traditional liquid crude).

For oil to go away there needs to be a better and cheaper and more volume way of doing and achieving the same things.

we no longer use whale oil because we have alternatives that are better in every way and magnitudes cheaper.

Oil is fantastic in every way and its extremely cheap (so mich so that whole nations survive off producing the stuff for pennies and selling it for pounds)


Its not going to go away anytime soon.
I would also say that coal is likely to diminish decades before oil can and we are nowhere near banishing coal from energy production so oil is safe for a long long time.

cells

The near term future (within 20 years) holds a few promising technologies which could curtail oil coal and gas use.

Self drive cars would make transport significantly more efficient cutting oil demand

project makani if successful could potentially allow windpower to rapidly scale to 50% of electricity and maybe 20% of primary energy

The Chinese and Indians may decide nuclear is in their national interest and take the and build 1500 reactors between them

---

But the energy story of our time is goung to be shale oil and gas. We are probably near the beginning of a 100 year bounty. Coal gas and oil is found in every continent and so will shale fossil fuels. Just like the Americans started the original oil boom and then others followed decades later its probably going to be the same with massive shake fields developed in other nations.

Even conventional nat gas was pretty much started by the Americans then developed decades later by other nations.

The only one they didn't do first was coal. That was europe because the USA didn't exist back then

Generali

ggb1979 wrote: »

On the basis that even if oil as a primary energy source is displaced by other forms of cheaper / cleaner energy oil will still be widely used for the plethora of raw materials it provides. Demand for the products that are produced from these will not go away.

Plenty on the net at large but quick and easy link as way of back up.

http://www.wintershall.com/en/company/oil-and-gas/oil-can-do-more.html

Well my boss went to a conference a month ago and the Saudi Minister for Petroleum and Natural Resources reckoned that output would continue to rise until 2025-30 and drop to ~0 by 2050.

That is the reason the Saudis are pumping as much oil as possible at the moment: if they thought they could sell forever then they would be better off cutting back production and getting a higher price for the resource but if it only has a finite life they need to sell as much as possible.

I reckon he probably has a better idea than the rest of us.

They plan to use solar (they have quite a lot of sun) and store using a combination of batteries and molten salt.

We had a speaker at work recently talking about the future for solar. He reckoned that individuals in Australia using solar panels and batteries would be able to produce electricity more cheaply than the electricity company by 2025 and for less than the cost of the 'poles and wires' (i.e. the way of delivering electricity from power station to home) by 2030.

The latter means that even if companies can produce power at nil cost, the cost of maintaining the delivery structure still makes them obsolete.

NB It's a bit unfair to pick up on my signature when you don't have one for me to pick on!

cells

Generali wrote: »

Well my boss went to a conference a month ago and the Saudi Minister for Petroleum and Natural Resources reckoned that output would continue to rise until 2025-30 and drop to ~0 by 2050.

That is the reason the Saudis are pumping as much oil as possible at the moment: if they thought they could sell forever then they would be better off cutting back production and getting a higher price for the resource but if it only has a finite life they need to sell as much as possible.

I reckon he probably has a better idea than the rest of us.

They plan to use solar (they have quite a lot of sun) and store using a combination of batteries and molten salt.

,

the mans an idiot if he thinks the kingdom is going to output no oil come 2050

Right now oil is a premium product reserved mostly for transport but not long ago it was just another heat source in power stations. Millions of barrels per day were burnt in power stations for electricity (even the UK still has two large oil fired stations but they are due to close soon and haven't been used for years except a few hours during peak winter)

If something happens to make oil demand fall significantly (self drive cars or they figure out how to build star trek type transporters or maybe even a really efficient electric car) then oil will go back to being used in power stations.

oil is cleaner than coal, and oil fired power stations are cheaper and easier to build they are also significantly more efficient. You could also make use of oil in gas turbines too to burn it at 60% efficency.

Mass oil will be around for decades longer than mass coal, and coal use in 2050 is going to be a hell of a lot more than it was in 2000. Of course this is all about volume.


As for why the Saudi are pumping lots of oil. My guess is that they fear the USA+Canada wpuld add 10-15mbpd more in production in less than 10 years if they kept oil at $100. That would mean OPEC would need to continuously cut production from 30mbpd to 15-20mbpd to maintain prices. And thats if they could control each other and cut output annually by 1mbpd. Also what if Europe develops shales too? Could be game over for OPEC in the same way it was for a while when the north sea production forced oil towards $10 a barrel.

Generali

I'm just reporting what I hear.

If the world is going to hit targets for containing climate change then fossil fuels are pretty much toast anyway.