R.I.P. the Petrocarbon Economy?

I think ExxonMobil will be around for some time to come and remain a big outfit.

I don’t see it. Eliminate gas powered cars and yes, that’s a big market but its not the only market. With what are you going to lubricate your windmill? With what are you going to replace oil/natural gas in fertilizers, chemicals, plastics, coatings, etc? Will you even be able to build a house or a vehicle without oil/natural gas? With what will you power a resurgent America when the wind doesn’t blow and/or the sun doesn’t shine?

Assuming that we all did run out and buy electric vehicles, what happens tonight when we all plug them in? I suspect the electric grid crashes and tomorrow none of us has a car to drive. Taking coal, oil, and natural gas out of the supply/demand equasion is not possible and certainly more complicated than putting us all in an electric car.

Here’s some food for thought, my Dad lives about ten hours away in Maine. It a beautiful ride, especially in the fall. How long will it take me in an electric car assuming I can find charges along the way? How much of my trip will be sitting in a parking lot as opposed to having an enjoyable ride? We are a long way from this transition. I’ll wait until the technology makes it a pleasant trip versus the annoying one it would be today.

You are delusional – this may happen one day but not in your lifetimes.

At the moment the sad fact is that to produce the electricity to power an electric car requires a power plant that produces more pollution. Solar is nice if you have acres of desert and love miles of high tension lines. Solar farms too often grow on farmland needed to feed an increasing population. Nuclear or harnessing the fusion power of the Sun in local power plants is where the future should be directed, Hydrogen is the most common element in the universe. And infrastructure could be built using the savings from much cheaper nuclear/ fusion power. Parking meters that are charging stations tied to one of your accounts, your car could have its own checking account, if a car exceeds parking limits it could even be cited. Spent nuclear fuel could be used to dilute plutonium from nuclear bombs and used as fuel. The problem with nuclear power is you can’t build on the cheap, as they found out in Japan. PG&E’s Canyon Diablo plant was built too high for tidal waves and rode out worse earthquakes and kept right on kicking out the kilowatts. Three Mile Island was built on the cheap and defective, Chernobyal was trying to run a plant from a field with a temporary control center that was caught by a grass fire.

THE ” POLITICS” OF ENERGY

I have been hearing this “pie in the sky” alternative energy talk for decades- virtually all of my adult life. Remember “Solar One” project in the Southern Calif. Desert in 1980?? Its old. Yet, as with past cycles- it reappears when the same factors converge (KARMA). Uncertainty, poor economies, financial and monetary change- a reshuffling of the deck. If you depend only on alternative energy then you will pay much more for it. Take electricity. Coal is cheap, plentiful and widely available in many countries and places. We are prematurely phasing it out vis a vis National Energy “Policy”.

We need to gradually adopt and implement ECONOMICAL energy alternatives primarily the free markets not relying heavily on the “hidden hand ” of government and interference by creating “false economies” that can never be sustained. Reality and free markets will always have their day anyway. We don’t seem to learn wishing does not equal having.

Next to nuclear power, coal fired power plants have proven to be the cheapest source of power per kilowatt hour to fuel industry and heat your “Medallion All-Electric Home”. ( This was for a brief time in the 1960’s, a veritable seal of approval for using cheap energy to meet your personal and household needs). The Arab Oil Embargo of 1973 changed all that and it has not gone back all that much since then.

This article is a reaction to the current (extreme) bear market in energy, liberal politics, and the perennial optimism of those who’s faith in man and technology is unshakable. Let met tell you, China would NOT have grown to be the Asian powerhouse it is without ALL the energy alternatives. Only with affluence can one have these kinds of esoteric discussions. We have really “lost our marbles”.

Thanks, I was suffering from the same general discussion in Germany 20 – 30 years ago, with the “green party”. (i am in the USA since the 90’s)
and remember this.
Our Secretary of Environmental affairs (EPA) was “Joshka Fisher”
he did nor even have “abitur” (high school diploma) (electrons, neutrons, protons were words he never heard before ..), but he was strong against nuclear energy .(green party platform) .
He was taxi driver ( not Newton, or Einstein) , but he said at the time nuclear energy is bad, and we still think in Germany we need an “Energie Wende” ..going “green”.
it is crotesque to listen to those people who have no knowledge on the subject matter from a scientific point of view.

Kathy and Boris show every sign of being excellent contra indicators … Just saying …

Energy density is the key concept driving the use of every form of it that we use. Oil in its many forms is energy dense. That’s why it is deployed in so many different applications. It’s going to be a long, long, long time before (if ever) electricity will be able to power a commercial airliner.

Lead acid batteries have the same energy density today that they did 100 years ago when the automobile was new. Other battery technologies aren’t really that much better. I’m sure that Lithium-ion has it’s place, but have you noticed that the commodities for the modern batteries (nickel, cadmium, lithium, and other exotic metals like germanium etc.) are extremely messy (dirty is another good word) to mine and refine. They are not near as plentiful as iron and aluminum.

Where there are many ideas for the creation, storage and release of electrons, not one of them can power mobile machines as conveniently or as reliably as liquid petroleum. Batteries take longer, often MUCH longer to replenish. Reliable…yes. Convenient…not in my book. My personal opinion is that natural gas will overtake petroleum as a mobile fuel for personal use cars, and long-haul commercial vehicles (semi-trucks mostly) long before electricity can do so as cheaply. This country also shows no propensity whatsoever to build passenger rail systems that are as widespread as in Europe or Japan. I’ll be owning a car (or pickup truck) for the rest of my life…thank you very much.

The real common denominator is true cost. Solar and wind are both subsidized with tax dollars, which is why they only look cheap. Government in general makes poor economic decisions because the decision makers aren’t “playing” with their own money. Don’t even start listing the recent (last 10 years) examples where the government “invested” in the ideas of the cronies of those in power, and those “investments” were nothing more than boondoggles for insiders.

If solar and wind had to stand on their own merits (cost per unit of output), they would both fail under current conditions, with exceptions in limited markets. The only place in my community where I see large installations of solar are on government property. That’s not a wise use of resources in my book.

now that most of agree that solar is NOT the way to go, is anybody interested in stocks?

if everyone thinks solar and wind are such great alternatives to oil and coal realize this solar costs 8-10 times more then fossil fuels to produce the same amount of energy and wind costs 12-14 times so…………………. getting back to oil its low price today is spelling doom even for the low cost producers like slumberger SLB and others do you realize Canada is now selling oil as of today at 15 dollars per barrel at the well ………….. THIS CANNOT GO ON FOR MUCH LONGER everyone may be enjoying the low cost of gasoline but this is devastating to the oil industry they will ALL be losing money for 2016 at these prices is anyone aware the average price to transport a barrel of oil by pipeline to the refiners is 11 dollars a barrel and its even more by rail coming in at a whopping 19 dollars per barrel ( since Obama wouldn’t ok the keystone pipeline to keep his democrat buddy warren buffet flush in cash this forced all the oil from Canada and shale oil from the united states to be driven by rail ) so in effect when the bottom shows when oil has capitulated look for some great buying opportunities some of the Permian basin oil producers will be the first to go up . We may see oil capitulate at 18 like some are saying but I think we are all going to see 50 dollar oil before we see 15 dollar oil here is a list of the largest Permian basin producers you may find helpful chevron CVX , apache APA, devon energy DVN , pioneer energy PXD, concho CXO , and occidental petro OXY

Im beginning to think BORIS and KATHY will go the way of the horse and buggy wayyyy before oil and petro products do

Advances in technology are going to change the world, including energy production, in the not so distant future, in ways we can hardly imagine. Futurist, inventor, and director of research at Google, Ray Kurzweil, (check his videos on Youtube) has been predicting for many years that solar energy will become cheaper and more plentiful, and replace most fossil fuels for much of our energy production in the 2020s (I’m doing the math…he hasn’t stated a year). According to him, use of solar has doubled approximately every 2 years for a very long time, and costs have been dropping by a great factor. Kurzweil recently stated that we are now only 6 doublings away from solar potentially (mathematically) supplying a majority of energy needs over the next ten years or so. Battery technology is also increasing to store solar energy when and where it is produced for use later or for transmission (over superior transmission technologies) to other locations. Tech improvements, especially involving nanotechnology, is rapidly improving in all these areas (conversion efficiency of solar energy at greater efficiency and from more frequencies into electricity, battery storage, transmission technology). Solar is supplying about 2% of world energy needs now. Two years ago, it was about 1%. Two years before that, it was about 0.5%.

If he’s correct, two years from now, solar will be supplying about 4% of total world energy. Four years from now, 8%. Six years from now, approximately 16%. Sooner or later, the markets have got to realize that the world’s need for oil and other fossil fuels for much of our energy, is in the process of collapsing. Electric cars will reduce the need for gasoline production in the not too far future. Surely, there are areas of energy use that won’t easily be taken over by solar, as other readers have pointed out, and solar use will level off somewhere significantly under 100%, but a very large portion of fossil fuel use for energy production will be replaced by solar in the not far future. The use of petroleum products for manufacture of many products will not be affected by solar energy production. However, other tech advances, especially in 3-D printing and future 3-D molecular assembly (atom by atom) of products at the point of use (your kitchen counter for example), points to sharp declines in all commodities’ prices and almost unbelievable changes to our manufacturing processes of almost all products. When you put things together atom by atom, manufacturing waste and pollution drops to near zero, and manufacturing costs of almost everything drops to a few dollars per pound. In 25 years, figure on your latest 4096-processor smartphone (if we still use them) costing less than $1 to knock out on your family’s 3-D Molecular Assembler. These technologies will become practical over the next ten to twenty years. Figure on resolution of 3-D printers to reach the level needed for clothing manufacture in the early 2020s. If we don’t blow ourselves to hell, plan on a very different world in just a few decades.

When will these tech factors start to press down on fossil fuel use and prices, assuming the petroleum industry doesn’t manage to buy enough politicians to prevent them? When will the markets start to look ten years to fourteen years into the future? When will oil producing countries realize that oil in the ground will become much less valuable?

After reading all of these comments, I am reminded of a statement I recently read that said “6% of Scientists are Republicans and scientists have no explanation as to why the number is so high”! My thanks to the scientists that have commented on this article…..Enough said, aye?…..

This is the sort of garbage I’d expect from a. gore.

Natural gas is our already our clean and abundant energy supply (200+ year proven USA supply and likely 500 year supply on worldwide development basis) that at present is powering already cars and heavy trucks down our highways, powering much of our electric generation, heating and cooling vast number of our homes at present and at very low cost and which if promoted would lead to the cleanest air ever far surpassing all EPA standards. It is absolutely the cleanest, cheapest and plentiful energy we have of any including the fantasies of solar and wind neither which are clean or inexpensive. In fact if we consider solar and wind construction and the battery needed to use in cars pollution cost entailed these two so called “green” energies are in reality the most polluting and expensive total nonsense ever devised. Yet, instead of embracing our clean and cheap supplies of natural gas energy we waste tax dollars subsidizing solar and wind that cannot slow pollution or supply the energy we need. My company uses CNG on all our vehicles and has for the past 3 years. It works and it is cheap and our vehicles run great and have had not a single failure from using CNG. Wake up America our politicians know this yet they push self serving green energy tax credits the taxpayers all pay for this pad their pals wallets for totally wastful spending on expensive, inefficient nonsense instead of pushing a ready and already in use natural gas solution at hand and heavily used which keeps our money at home producing the gas, employing millions of Americans with high paying jobs, producing huge revenues to local, state and federal government and the owners of mineral rights across this nation. Natural gas is the answer to pollution, energy and jobs and it is ready, the carsand trucks can use it right now and we can stop playing political charades with taxpayer money and overzealous environmentalist who push solar and wind without even knowing or understanding the true pollution and cost involved in this destructive scheme of promiting wind and solar neither of any value and both expensive and very dirty polluters of our environment. Wake up America and research the truth instead of blindly following political agenda’s to profit from the green exuberance of our media misinformed citizens.

Bring on a modern version of the old Stanley Steam car and keep the oil for manufacture, like plastics etc.

I find it strange that we talk about cars regarding oil, they make up less the 17 percent of the oil use. Oil is used in everything from factories to clothing to medicine. Oil will not go away just because we found an alternative energy. Until we change our processing/manufacturing goods cycles, nothing much will change regarding pollution. Lets stop focusing on the 17 percent and start focusing on the 83 percent. Its funny how the great magicians always manage to get everyone to look at the unimportant so that the important does not get any attention.