Special Microwave Turns Plastic into Oil!

You heard it here first, folks!

Global Resources Corporation has developed a specialized microwave that directs energy at plastics and releases the hydrocarbons. The result? Waste plastics are transformed into diesel oil, combustible gas, carbon, and whatever else is in the original plastic!

As we know, plastics are made from oil. Some, however, are extremely energy-intensive and expensive to recycle into new plastics. GRC's process can recycle essentially anything which contains hydrocarbons, including those pesky worn-out tires that burn so freely in junkyards across the nation!

I'm all for reducing and reusing first, and buying more durable products which we need not recycle so quickly; however, a process like this can provide incentive for people to mine our junkyards for oil resources, stretching the life of in-earth oil reserves AND the capacity of our landfills.

Read more at http://environment.newscientist.com/article/dn12141-giant-microwave-turns-plastic-back-to-oil.html

CIGS are good for you? When it's solar technology, sure!

That's right, there's yet another solar power technology under development, and this one is poised to hit the market in 2009. It's called CIGS, an abbreviation for CuInGaSe2, which is an abbreviation for copper, inidium, gallium, selenide 2, a semiconductor compound which, embedded in a sheet of polymer, can release electrons while absorbing sunlight. It's been around since the 1990s, but relatively low cost of silicon (until now - processing is extremely energy-intensive) and the extremely low cost of carbon fuels (until now) have hampered the need for development.

Like the dye-based cells mentioned yesterday, these cells can work on cloudy days.

Also like the dye-based cells mentioned yesterday, they will have a lower production rate per square foot of cell, compared to traditional, silicon-based cells. However, it is expected by US firm Allied Materials that a product which produces power at a cost of $1 per watt (competitive with current carbon-based power generation) will be ready by 2009. Swiss company Flisom is working on a similar product and timeline.

The bad news? Even the boosters aren't enthusiastic about solar wresting production capacity away from carbon:

"We think solar power can provide 20pc of all the incremental energy needed worldwide by 2040," [says Mike Staple, of Allied Materials]

The full article is available here.

Nothing to See Here . . . No Worries!

This parody of business blogs paints a rosy picture:

We Will Never Run Out of Oil, For Reals

No really. Cantarell is soaring, like the Hindenberg. Perma-downers like Matthew Simmons chirp “peak oil” like a kookaburra spotting a snake or whatever it is a kookaburra chirps about up in the eucalyptus, but our “infinity oil” thesis posits that not only we will never hit so-called peak oil, we will never ever run out of oil.
Never ever.

Soaring like the Hindenburg. An apt turn of phrase!

The Cantarell Oil Field is Mexico's largest, and the second-largest in the world, with a current production in the neighborhood of 2 million barrels per day. However, it has already peaked and begun its decline.

The parodist's link is to a WSJ article which requires a subscription to view. Here's a free link to another story on the same subject . . . from 2006.

Pemex Says Cantarell 2006 Production to Decline 8% (Update1)
By Thomas Black

Aug. 2 (Bloomberg) -- Petroleos Mexicanos, Mexico's state- owned oil monopoly, said production at its Cantarell oil field, the world's second-largest by volume, will decline 8 percent in 2006, dropping faster than its December [2005] estimate of 6 percent.

Cantarell will produce 1.86 million barrels of crude a day in 2006, Vinicio Suro, deputy director of planning and evaluation for Pemex's production and exploration unit, said in a conference call with analysts. Pemex in December [2005] said the field, which accounted for 57 percent of Mexican crude output in the first half of this year, would produce 1.9 million barrels per day in 2006 compared with 2.03 million barrels a day in 2005. [Emphasis added.]

. . .

With efforts to stem Cantarell's decline and to boost output at peripheral fields, daily production at the company may decline to less than 2.8 million barrels by 2010 and 2.5 million barrels by 2012, Padilla said. [Note: this is for the company as a whole, not the Cantarell field.]

"Our bigger concern starts in about 2008,'' Padilla said.

Suro said Pemex is developing different geological models and estimates that could change the forecast for Cantarell production it made in December of 1.68 million barrels per day in 2007 and 1.43 million barrels a day in 2008.

I wonder what's happening now? Hey, this looks fresh, also from Bloomberg:

Pemex Turns to Horizontal Wells to Boost Oil Output, WSJ Says
By James Kraus

April 5 (Bloomberg) -- Petroleos Mexicanos is increasing the use of horizontal wells that allow a single platform to pull oil from a larger area to maximize dwindling reserves at the Cantarell field, the Wall Street Journal said..

The company, the third biggest oil supplier to the U.S., plans to drill more such wells this year as part of $2.4 billion in spending to slow the decline in output at the field to about 50 percent of last year's rate, the Journal said, citing consultants.

The wells may cut the decrease in output to about 200,000 barrels of daily output at year's end from about 400,000, the Journal said.

Cantarell last year supplied the Mexican government with $25 billion out of some $53 billion in oil revenue, the Journal said. Pemex predicts the field will probably continue to decline by about 10 percent annually to a daily average of 600,000 in 2013, the Journal reported. [Emphasis added.]

Last Updated: April 5, 2007 03:52 EDT

Let's do the math, shall we? 2006 prediction was 1.86 MBD (million barrels per day), down from just over 2.0 MBD. That's a predicted decline of 140,000 BD. Compare with the actual decline of 400,000 BD!

I wonder if everyone else is predicting as well as Pemex?

Cantarell is indeed soaring like the Hindenburg. How's that hydrogen economy coming along, by the way?

US Government (GAO): Peak Oil by 2040

As I begin this blog, gasoline prices have reached $3.00 a gallon or more in some parts of the United States, with a ten-cent rise in the past week. Oil is running about $64.50 per barrel.

Meanwhile, most oil fields throughout the world have peaked, outside of the Middle East. United States oil fields peaked in 1971.

Last week, the Government Accountability Office of the United States Government released a report ("CRUDE OIL: Uncertainty about Future Oil Supply Makes It Important to Develop a Strategy for Addressing a Peak and Decline in Oil Production") detailing projections for the peak and decline of oil production worldwide. The highlights include:

The situation, as GAO sees it:

The U.S. economy depends heavily on oil, particularly in the transportation sector. World oil production has been running at near capacity to meet demand, pushing prices upward. Concerns about meeting increasing demand with finite resources have renewed interest in an old question:

What question? This is the question framed by GAO:

How long can the oil supply expand before reaching a maximum level of production—a peak—from which it can only decline?

The answer GAO arrived at:

. . . oil production will peak sometime between now and 2040.

Ah, that's specific. Thanks. GAO continues:

This range of estimates is wide . . . how quickly the oil remaining in the ground is used [depends upon] the amount of oil still in the ground; how much of that oil can ultimately be produced given technological, cost, and environmental challenges as well as potentially unfavorable political and investment conditions in some countries where oil is located; and future global demand for oil. Demand for oil will, in turn, be influenced by global economic growth and may be affected by government policies on the environment and climate change and consumer choices about conservation.

What does that mean for us in the US (and other industrialized nations)?

In the United States, alternative fuels and transportation technologies face challenges that could impede their ability to mitigate the consequences
of a peak and decline in oil production, unless sufficient time and effort are brought to bear.

For example, although corn ethanol production is technically feasible, it is more expensive to produce than gasoline and will require costly investments in infrastructure, such as pipelines and storage tanks, before it can become widely available as a primary fuel.

Key alternative technologies currently supply the equivalent of only about 1 percent of U.S. consumption of petroleum products, and the Department of Energy (DOE) projects that even by 2015, they could displace only the equivalent of 4 percent of projected U.S. annual consumption. In such circumstances, an imminent peak and sharp decline in oil production could cause a worldwide recession.

If the peak is delayed, however, these technologies have a greater potential to mitigate the consequences. DOE projects that the technologies could displace up to 34 percent of U.S. consumption in the 2025 through 2030 time frame, if the challenges are met. The level of effort dedicated to overcoming challenges will depend in part on sustained high oil prices to encourage sufficient investment in and demand for alternatives. [Emphasis added.]

So what does that mean? According to the GAO report, the decline in oil production will begin in earnest any time in the next 33 years. "Any time" includes next week. If we really work hard, we in the US can replace 34 % of our current energy consumption by 2030, or in the next 23 years! And that's only with both political will and massive investments in new infrastructure and deployment of technology.

Oh, happy day, the government will save us! Or at least cushion the blow.

GAO continues:

However, there is no coordinated federal strategy for reducing uncertainty about the peak’s timing or mitigating its consequences.

Oops. Maybe not.

What does GAO recommend?

To better prepare for a peak in oil production, GAO recommends that the Secretary of Energy work with other agencies to establish a strategy to coordinate and prioritize federal agency efforts to reduce uncertainty about the likely timing of a peak and to advise Congress on how best to mitigate consequences. In commenting on a draft of the report, the Departments of Energy and the Interior generally agreed with the report and recommendations.

GAO recommends . . . another study.

Here's a more extensive review of the GAO study, if you don't feel like reading the whole thing!

Perhaps some more concrete recommendations would be useful. Things coming to mind here?

• Immediately raise CAFE standards. We have the technology for cars to get far better mileage on average, yet still produce cars getting less than 20 mpg. WHY?

• Institute a new gas tax. WHAT? Yes. A tax on consumer gasoline, with all funds earmarked toward public transportation and development/deployment of alternative energy generation. This would serve multiple goals: encourage more efficient use of existing autos by consumers; increase demand for more efficient vehicles; encourage a transition to public transportation or location closer to resources (employment, shopping); and raise funds for large-scale subsidized deployment of solar arrays and mass-transit projects, along with other retrofit projects.

• Phase out the incandescent light bulb. Only 5% of the energy used by such a bulb creates light; the rest creates heat. By contrast, 15-30% of the energy used by a compact fluorescent (which currently costs about $2) creates light. They also require less frequent replacement, lasting 10,000 hours instead of an incandescent's 1,000. California has already introduced legislation to phase out incandescents by 2012. From the article:

In the US, there are around 4 billion incandescent light bulb sockets, says Dutch company Philips, which launched a campaign in Washington DC on 14 March to scrap all inefficient lighting in North America by 2016. Replacing incandescent bulbs with energy-efficient ones would cut the US's annual electricity bill by $18 billion, and cut CO2 emissions by 158 million tonnes, the company says.

Europe uses almost as many incandescent bulbs - 3.9 billion - and so could make similar savings. "If everyone changed over from incandescent bulbs, we could save the energy equivalent to 10 million households," says a spokeswoman for the European Commission, which in May will consider legislation to dump the bulb.

More to come . . .