This is a continuation of the tech talks, discussing technical topics, that I write on Sundays. For the past few weeks I have been writing about some of the techniques used in producing the gas from shales, and that will likely continue for another week or two. Because of [...]
One of the features of many models that are used to predict future events is that they focus on target years. Decadal years are the most common target years, so that whether talking of climate or the amount of oil or natural gas available, models focus on, for example, the [...]
This post is one of my series of tech talks, describing some of the ways in which fossil fuels are produced. In the current part of the series we are focusing a little more on the procedures that are being used to recover natural gas from formations such as [...]
Yesterday the President of the largest gold mining and production company, Barrick Gold, noted that after ten years of declining production it is time to recognize that the world has seen the peak in gold production. To maintain production ore is being mined with increasingly less gold in it. [...]
Robert Cutler has an interesting article in Gundogar recently in which he asks, concerning the recent articles questioning the size of Turkenistan’s gas reserves “Who stands to gain?” from the imbroglio. His conclusion is that it is likely the Russians, and certainly not the Turkmen.
The story, in [...]
There are a number of us who write about the situation in regard to the world supply of liquid fuels, and the future availability of those supplies. In general we began by gleaning our information from the internet, or each other, and from those relatively amateurish beginnings a community has [...]
So far in this series of technical talks, I have tried to explain some of the pieces that have to be put together to get crude oil or natural gas out of the ground. I intend to go on with the series in the coming weeks, but thought that [...]
Unfortunately I have had to miss the ASPO Meeting in Denver this week, and so cannot provide the daily reports that I have written in the past. But I notice that at least one of the talks has already caught a significant amount of press, and that is the [...]
In trying to estimate the size of the problem that will face the world as the available reserves of fossil fuel begin to decline, one has to make some assumptions about the size of the volumes that are available. It is a debate that can lead to people talking past [...]
A few days ago, I gave a presentation in Poland that talks about how much difficulty the world is having maintaining its oil production. The presentation was not set up to be a response to Jad Mouawad's recent New York Times article, Oil Industry Sets a Brisk Pace of' [...]
Turkmenistan holds significantly large quantities of natural gas (they hold the world’s fourth largest reserves) and these have, over the years, proved attractive to Russia, China and the West. Until fairly recently, despite some bad relationships from time to time, the natural gas that the country produced made its way [...]
Well, there are several ways to go after talking about the pressures that develop at the bottom of oilwells. But before going on to talk about completing the well, let me first just cover some basic terms and parts that go into getting the bit to actually turn and drill [...]
The news from Mexico just continues to get worse with bad news from all three of their biggest oil fields, even as our perennial cornucopian talks of “a Mexican surprise.” As Gregor noted recently (h/t ft energysource) at the beginning of the year Cantarell was producing 862,000 bd [...]
Michael Lynch would have it believed that those who follow this site are relying purely on “anecdotal information, vague references and ignorance of how the oil industry goes about finding fields and extracting petroleum,”, so I’m here again proving him wrong. Here, on Sundays I give a little of [...]
The power plant on our campus is set up so that it can burn either coal, natural gas or wood feed stocks. At the present time the natural gas lines are blocked, since the trends of increasing price made it uneconomic to use within the boilers. However the plant uses [...]
So what the heck is Camelina? Until I read that it was used as the greater source of the biofuel component for the test flight of the Japanese Airlines plane in February, I must confess I had never heard of it. So since it has obviously got some legs [...]
It’s the start of a new Semester, and at the beginning of my Power class I spend the first lecture reviewing where I think we stand on the Energy supply to the United States. This has changed a bit since last year and so I thought I would run through [...]
I thought that this week we would expand the horizon of these talks a little, and talk about the general philosophy of breaking rock, since the extraction of fossil fuel requires more than just the drilling of holes. I’m going to give a couple of further examples of the benefits [...]
Just as the thread on post on Drilling was winding down two weeks ago, horizonstar posted a comment about the tools that Potter Drilling is developing for geothermal drilling, with $4 million worth of help from Google. The comment takes you to a Grist post, [...]
There are times when new technologies are proposed as being better ways of drilling for oil and natural gas. However, to understand how these are better (or more likely not) than existing technologies, you have to know how the industry commonly drills through rock. There are two basic ways of [...]
The international impacts from a lack of sufficient power are often missed when debate swirls about the price of oil and gas, and the need to control emissions as part of an effort to change climate dynamics. There is a site, Energy Shortage, which provides information on the different [...]
It is a relatively cool, overcast day here in Cambridge, MA, a little damp, with only the occasional tree moving in almost 24 hours. But yesterday I was chased up the New York Thruway by a storm carrying hail and cutting visibility to yards. These weather conditions suggest that today [...]
Heading Out (Dave Summers) is currently visiting China...perhaps these ideas will give us some inspiration for ideas here as well.
Solar heating of a kettle (30 min to boiling)
One of the concerns of the Qinghai Administration deals with the large number of herders that [...]
If you had not gathered this before, then you should know that I have been favorably impressed with the potential of algae as a future source of biofuels. However I recognize that there is a considerable amount of research and business development and growth that will have [...]
Robert Rapier recently drew attention to the demise of GreenFuel Technologies, the company founded on ideas from MIT and Harvard and supported by millions of dollars in venture capital funding. One of the creative ideas that the company has was to located their plant at existing power stations [...]
When discussions arise about Climate Change, and the possibility that carbon dioxide and the other greenhouse gases are responsible for the rise in global temperatures, one prevailing argument is that “we cannot afford to take the risk of the AGW argument being right, without doing something.” However, in that discussion, [...]
Happy Birthday, Gentle Readers, to you, Prof Goose, Nate, Gail and all those who form The Oil Drum community. It has been four years now since he who then was known only as Prof Goose, and I – Heading Out – decided to launch this site, as a way of [...]
I read a lot of books. (A quick measure comes up with more than 10 ft of shelf space filled with books relating to the topic of peak oil and alternate fuels – not counting the books that deal with drilling and other aspects of technology that relate more to [...]
One of my most enduring memories of Washington D.C. occurred while attending a meeting on Geothermal Energy Development, back in the days before the Iron Curtain fell. In the evening after dinner, I took a colleague from Eastern Europe, on his first American visit, for a walk down the Mall. [...]
Well they say that “the Times they are a changin’ ” and with the impending change in the Administration and its approach to energy , and the change in the leadership of the Energy and Commerce Committee in the House, I suspect that change is [...]
As the first gentle snowflakes of winter settled on the windscreen of my car I was reminded, yet again, of the turning of the seasons and our need for power to keep us warm through the coming months. Last week I commented on how jobs might be created as the [...]
To steal a phrase “It is the best of times, it is the worst of times,” although the rest of the opening to A Tale of Two Cities (“It was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it [...]
Sometimes, I have to admit, when predictions are made, I can be just wrong. Asked, early in the summer as to the wisdom of buying winter supplies of heating oil in the North East, I suggested that there would be a likely continued rise in price, and that with distributors [...]
The rains in the Southwest of Scotland, at the end of last week, had an unfortunate consequence relating to the use of a car, beyond Dumfries. With all respect to Alan, as one moves away from the population centers, up from London, past Newcastle and Carlisle and then up to [...]
This is the post where I try and draw my own conclusions from the Conference. And not recognizing many of the papers in this does not mean that they weren’t important, but rather that from my own perspective that this is what I got most from.
The recurrent word that cropped [...]
It seems as though I have inhabited two different worlds in the past 24 hours. I went from the relatively small (500 folk) meeting in Sacramento where Peak Oil is viewed as imminent, to the halls of the Convention Center in Las Vegas, where the Quadrennial MinExpo [...]
Day three of the ASPO-USA Conference in Sacramento was focused on where we go from here with fuels other than oil. It began with a session on coal and natural gas reserves and the potential of biofuels. There was considerable information on each of the slides that each of he [...]
Ed's Note: The intent of this thread is to combine two different discussion items:
1. A one-hour special on the oil situation, The Hunt for Black Gold. It features a discussion of peak oil, an interview with Sarah Palin, Matt Simmons, Randy Udall, and a closer look at oil company [...]
The ASPO conference in Sacramento began here Sunday, September 21, just after lunch – with a set of three concurrent sessions. Unfortunately I could only be in one place, and that was tied by structure, so my report on this afternoon is thus a little constrained.
The first track dealt with [...]
Gail’s recent post on the fragility of the US distribution system and the shortages that will be imposed by refinery outages, is a reminder of our dependence on pipelines for supply. The dependence is not just in the US, though the debate over the reality of a [...]
One of the benefits of running this site as long as we have is that it can now act as a diary through which, should you wish, you can go back and see how the story unfolded for the three hurricanes that created so much devastation in 2005.
We did not [...]
Although the days are still relatively hot and the sun high in the sky, this summer is coming to an end. The order has gone in for the wood that will help us heat the house this winter, and the students have arrived for a new semester. Which means, a [...]
When I first went to talk to someone about investing in stocks, it was carefully explained to me that I should not be concerned over daily fluctuations but rather should look at longer-term outcomes of events. So it has been with the recent price fluctuations with fuel, in that I [...]
When the weather in the mid-West gets hot and humid, as it does at this time of year, it is pleasant to have the chance to head up to Maine, (along I might note with two solid streams of traffic from Boston all the way North). Thus it was that [...]
An increasing number of stories in Drumbeat, and in the world press, are focusing on the impacts of higher oil prices. Whether it is in the sacrifices that families must make to stretch their incomes to cover costs, the lack of city and state funding to cover all [...]
| digg_url = 'http://www.theoildrum.com/node/4242'; | In my last post I talked a little about the media’s normal pre-disposition to ask relatively comfortable questions about the state of oil (and natural gas) supply, with the consequence that some of the more difficult questions and those with more painful answers don’t get [...]
And some (natural gas) answers are expensive—The Oil Drum
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