410. MORE ON THE IMPORT LAND EFFECT

This is a continuation of the previous post 409. THE IMPORT LAND MODEL examining the relevance of the Jeffrey Brown's Export Land Model (ELM).

According to the ELM, growth in oil consumption by exporters will rapidly reduce available exports. However, as I showed in the previous article, total 2008 consumption growth of all major exporters was about 486 kbd, while the 2008 drop in oil consumption by the US alone was -1,262 kbd. This means that increased consumption by exporters was completely swamped by decreased consumption by importers. Indeed, the drop in consumption by the US alone in 2008 eliminated roughly 2.5 years worth of the ELM effect. I call this the import land effect.

This effect is getting larger. Examining the Weekly US Petroleum Products Supplied from the EIA, I compared average US fuel consumption for Jan. 1-July 4, 2008 with the corresponding period for 2009. The results:

2008: 20,504 kbd
2009: 18,831 kbd

As you can see, US consumption is down by about -1,673 kbd in 2009 over 2008. This makes a total drop in consumption of roughly 3,000 kbd in two years -- an amount sufficient to wipe out the ELM for about 6.2 years.

And keep in mind: so far I am only considering consumption shrinkage in the US alone. When we figure in the structural drop in consumption in the OECD, which peaked in 2005 and will show a large consumption drop for the 4th consecutive year in 2009, it's likely that importer demand shrinkage is going to wipe out 8 or more years of consumption growth by exporting countries.

So Jeffrey Brown's 2005 prediction

"As I said last year, I expect that by the end of 2006 we will be in the teeth of a ferocious net oil export crisis." Source

is set to recede even further into the future.

The problem is that Brown's ELM calculates available exports like this

Available exports = Production by exporting nations - Consumption growth by exporting nations

when in fact, it is calculated like this

Available exports = Production by exporting nations - Consumption growth by exporting nations + Consumption shrinkage by importing nations

and the third term is currently swamping the second term.

by JD

409. THE IMPORT LAND MODEL

I've previously discussed the statistical gimmickry of Jeffrey Brown's Export Land Model (ELM). The problem can be quickly summarized like this: Suppose you have a fuel tank which is running down at a rate of 1 liter per hour. Ordinary people with common sense would say that the tank is being drawn down at a constant rate. Similarly, mathematicians would call this a simple linear decline at a constant rate. Jeffrey Brown, however, claims that the draw down is occurring at an exponentially accelerating decline rate. I kid you not. If you're curious about how this amazing feat of smoke and mirrors is achieved, here is a detailed explanation.

Today I'd like to talk about another gimmick of the ELM. Veterans who have read a lot of Brown's writing will have noticed that he always focuses on a few carefully selected examples: Indonesia, the UK and of course "Export Land" (the fictional country he uses to illustrate the model). He never seems to bring it all together, and give a coherent picture of the net export situation for the entire world. There is a good reason for this. When you look at the big picture, the ELM "crisis" appears in a very different light.

Consider the following table, showing oil consumption growth in the world's top 20 exporting countries (click to enlarge):

The first column gives the exporter, the second column gives growth in consumption from 2007 to 2008, and the third column gives average growth in consumption for the past 3 years. The figures in black come from the BP Stat. Rev. 2009, and the figures in blue come from the EIA. All figures indicate thousand barrels per day (kbd).

The first striking thing is how small these numbers are (with the possible exception of Saudi Arabia and Russia). For example, consumption in Mexico only increased by 13,000 barrels per day in 2008, and an average of only 35,000 barrels per day over the last 3 years.

For comparison, the US consumed 19.4 million bd in 2008. That's 1500 times the size of consumption growth in Mexico in 2008. Mexico's growth in oil consumption is literally one tiny piss-ant oil field a year. And Mexico is very representative of oil exporters in general.

So the idea that oil exporting nations are ravenously chewing into the developed world's oil supply is completely at odds with the facts.

In 2008, total world oil exports were around 40 mbd, and total growth in oil consumption by exporters was about 490 kbd. So growth by exporters in 2008 only consumed about 1.2% of the pool of available exports. Graphically, it looks like this:
According to the ELM, that little blue sliver is the bad guy. But try overlaying US oil consumption on the same graph for a size check:
Let's not fool ourselves about who's really sucking down all the oil, and needs to cut back. It's not the oil exporters.

And that leads me to the most interesting point.

On April 5, 2006, Jeffrey Brown (aka "Westexas") made the following prediction:

"As I said last year, I expect that by the end of 2006 we will be in the teeth of a ferocious net oil export crisis." Source

This turned out to be totally wrong in an interesting and unexpected way. The reason is that oil consumption in the US dropped by -1,262 kbd in 2008. This means that the decrease in consumption in the US alone cancelled out about 3 years of consumption growth by all exporting countries. Similarly, Japan's consumption has been dropping by about -166 kbd per year for the last 3 years, totally compensating for consumption growth in Saudi Arabia, the largest exporter consumer. There are also a number of other nations where oil consumption is steadily declining.

So instead of seeing a decrease in available exports due to rising consumption by exporters, what the statistics actually show is importer consumption dropping faster than exporter consumption is rising. I call this effect the "Import Land Model".

Given Brown's prediction it's a very paradoxical outcome. But it's also very satisfying. Clearly we should continue in just this vein: cancelling out exporter consumption growth through conservation and efficiency in the OECD.

by JD

408. KJELL ALEKLETT: 0.5% PER ANNUM POST-PEAK DECLINE

A few weeks ago Kjell Aleklett, President of ASPO International, visited Australia and gave a presentation which included his forecast for oil production in 2030:

Professor Aleklett addressed the NSW electric car task force and the Federal Government's Bureau of Infrastructure, Transport and Regional Economics yesterday. He had earlier warned a Senate committee that the International Energy Agency had wildly overestimated oil production, lulling nations such as Australia into a false sense of security.

Rather than oil production rising by 20 per cent to 101.5 million barrels a day in 2030, he says production is likely to fall 11 per cent, to just 76 million barrels a day.Source

A fall of 11% to 76mbd means that Aleklett is using a figure of roughly 85.4mbd for the current production level. (In other words, he is using the term "oil" to mean liquids in this context.)

Running the numbers, we find that Aleklett is predicting a post-peak liquids decline rate of 0.5% per year. He is predicting that liquids production 21 years from now will be roughly 90% of what it is today (76/85.4 = 89%). This rate of decline is extremely mild and easy to cope with. Indeed a decline of 11% in liquids fuel production is substantially less than the 14% decline which occurred over the course of only 4 years in the early 1980s (a time I like to call The Big Glitch).

For reference, here is Aleklett's forecast from P. 40 of the pdf of his presentation (available here, click to enlarge):

Aleklett also foresees a mild decline rate for conventional crude (i.e., C&C, not including non-conventional, NGL etc.) The most recent production figure for conventional crude (EIA, March 2009) was 72 mbd. So Aleklett forecasts that conventional crude 21 years from now will be 77% of what it is today. That translates into an annual decline rate of 1.3% -- again, very mild.

These facts show that Kjell Aleklett, President of ASPO international, is basically in agreement with my own well-known prediction from Dec. 2007:

JD's Prediction: World C&C production will decline at an average annual rate of 1% for 15 years after the world C&C peak.

Don't let doomers pull your leg. They love to talk about extremely high post-peak decline rates, but the top people, like Kjell Aleklett, don't buy it. For more information on the principle of slow decline, please see:

317. STRONG ARGUMENT FOR A SLOW DECLINE and
323. LARGE BLOCKS PLATEAU FOR DECADES

by JD

407. THE OIL DRUM PIMPS RACIST PUBLICATION

[Note from JD (2009/7/5): The situation described in this post has been resolved somewhat, as described by the update at the bottom. The Oil Drum is no longer pimping a racist publication. They are now pimping an article from a racist publication, without indicating where it came from.]

Today, the Oil Drum is featuring an article by pseudo-scientist Richard "worldwide permanent electrical blackouts by 2007" Duncan, and the intro by Nate Hagens begins like this:

This is a guest posting of Richard Duncan's latest "Olduvai" update, which is also featured in the Summer 2009 issue of The Social Contract Quarterly www.thesocialcontract.com.

The uninitiated may not know what is going on here, so let me explain. The "Social Contract Quarterly" is not a scientific journal. It's a rag published and edited by overt white supremacists.

Let me be clear:
The Oil Drum, an ostensibly scientific and reality-based website, is directing its readers to a white supremacist publication and website.

Here's the Southern Poverty Law Center on "The Social Contract":

The Social Contract Press
Petoskey, Mich.
www.tscpress.com

With a strong focus on immigration, The Social Contract Press (TSCP) sells books from its on-line bookstore and publishes a quarterly journal, The Social Contract. TCSP says it favors lowering immigration levels merely "to reduce the rate of American's population growth, protect jobs, preserve the environment, and foster assimilation."

But it publishes a number of racist works, including a reprint of the "gripping" 1973 book, The Camp of the Saints (see Fear and Fantasy), a French racist fantasy novel about the obliteration of Western civilization by dark-skinned hordes from India. The novel, like the race war fantasy The Turner Diaries, has become a key screed for American white supremacists.

The Social Contract is edited by Wayne Lutton, who recently the joined the editorial advisory board of the newspaper of the white supremacist Council of Conservative Citizens (CCC).

At a 1997 CCC conference, Lutton said Third Worlders "have declared racial demographic war against us. ... Why are their populations exploding? Because ... our people have exported medical technology and we feed them.

"Had we left them alone, many of them would be going extinct today."

The Social Contract has published articles by James Lubinskas of the racist American Renaissance magazine; Brent Nelson, who like Lutton is on the advisory board for the CCC's periodical, and Sam Francis, current editor of the CCC tabloid.

John H. Tanton, publisher of The Social Contract Press and founder of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, was instrumental in a 1996 effort to add an anti-immigration plank to the Sierra Club platform, a move that nearly split the environmental group permanently.

To editor Lutton, America essentially is a white man's country. "We are the real Americans," he declared in 1997, "not the Hmong, not Latinos, not the Siberian-Americans. ... As far as the future, the handwriting is on the screen. The Camp of the Saints is coming our way."Source

John H. Tanton, publisher of the "The Social Contract" has said that unless U.S. borders are sealed, America will be overrun by people "defecating and creating garbage and looking for jobs."Source

Here's a photo of Wayne Lutton Ph.D., editor of "The Social Contract" (2nd from right), at a meeting of white supremacists on June 11, 2004. Note the confederate flag in the foreground:

Update 2009/7/5:
Nate has now removed the link to The Social Contract, and added the following response to Peak Oil Debunked:

[Editor's Note: Some have noted that this article was first published by a controversial organization; TOD protocol for guest essays is to include the original source of the piece. It was not my/our intent to direct people to the site or to endorse its content, just like we don't endorse any other site's content or any particular world view. Let's focus the discussion on the essay itself; and debate it on its own merits please.]

This still does not address the underlying problem: If Richard Duncan is a legitimate scientist, whose work we should debate as legitimate science, then why does he publish his work in a rag published by low-rent racists instead of, say, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, or Nature, or Science, or one of the thousands and thousands of other reputable, peer-reviewed scientific journals?

The answer to that is clear: Duncan can't publish his work in reputable journals because he's a pseudo-scientist moron who (among many other things) predicted worldwide permanent electrical blackouts by the year 2007.

There's is no need to "discuss" Duncan's tripe. All we need to do his wait, and compare his Fig. 5 (shown below) with reality over the next 5 years.


The figure Duncan is graphing - energy consumption per capita (in barrels of oil equivalent, or "boe") - has been steady at about 56-60 boe/c since 1990 in the US (as calculated from the BP Stat. Rev. figures for energy consumption, and census figures for population). As you can see Duncan is predicting that this figure will fall to about 48 boe/c in 2012, and to about 36 boe/c in 2015. These are ridiculous drops - in short, a repeat of his mentally retarded prediction of worldwide permanent blackouts by 2007 - and will be exposed as such in about 3 years. Stay tuned for a thorough tar and feathering.

by JD

406. ORLOV NYC EVENT CANCELED

Camrade Orlov has now posted a mea culpa for his recent numerical blunder.

(BTW, my recent expose DMITRY ORLOV CONCEDES HE'S AN IDIOT is now on the front page of Google for "Dmitry Orlov". As usual, Peak Oil Debunked powers through the seas of doomer bullshit, straight to the top of the charts.)

Reading the comments to that article, I was amused to see that Dmitry had a presentation (tickets: $20-30) scheduled in NYC for July 11, 2009, but it was cancelled due to poor ticket sales. Apparently only 18 people in the entire NY metropolitan area (population 8.3 million +) expressed any interest. LOL

For reference, here's the comments:

"I just found out that the event in NY is cancelled. A couple of days ago I called Local Energy Solutions to find out why my check was not cashed, and I've got a reply that the event might be postponed or cancelled because there was not enough response."

"Wow. Only 18 people bought tickets for the talk? I was expecting "sold out" and hundreds of people bustling in an auditorium, not "cancelled"."

"Can't believe the NY event is off !"

Clearly the event was nuked due to pathetic turn out. True blue americans can smell a rat a mile away.

by JD

405. SUPPLY CRUNCH RECEDES

For the last few months the peak oilers have been terrorizing the newbies with the "looming supply crunch" due to lack of investment. Much of this was based on comments earlier this year by the IEA:

"Currently the demand is very low due to the very bad economic situation," [Nobuo Tanaka, the IEA's executive director] said. "But when the economy starts growing and recovery comes again in 2010 and onward, we may have another serious supply crunch if capital investment is not coming."

However, this one has now bitten the bag like so many other peak oil scares over the years:

IEA sees global oil supply crunch risk recede
Jun 29 2009

The world may escape an oil supply crisis for the next five years because a slow recovery from the economic downturn would hold down growth of demand, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said on Monday.

Yet another case where the peak oilers relentlessly hype an anticipated threat, and provide no reporting at all when the threat evaporates.

And in related news, the IEA just cut 3 million barrels per day for demand for the next four years: So Much for Chinese Demand (hat tip to Eric J. Fox)

by JD

404. 100 YEARS OF NATURAL GAS

Rigzone reports some very important news:

The amount of natural gas available for production in the United States has soared 58% in the past four years, driven by a drilling boom and the discovery of huge new gas fields in Texas, Louisiana and Pennsylvania, a new study says.

The report, due to be released Thursday by the nonprofit Potential Gas Committee, concludes the U.S. has more than 2,000 trillion cubic feet of natural gas still in the ground, or nearly a century's worth of production at current rates. That's a 35.4% jump over the committee's last estimate, in 2007, of 1,532 trillion cubic feet, the biggest increase in the committee's 44-year history.

Boone Pickens puts that volume in perspective:

The 2,074 trillion cubic feet of domestic natural gas reserves cited in the study is the equivalent of nearly 350 billion barrels of oil, about the same as Saudi Arabia’s oil reserves.

For those who aren't up on the history: this is a case where the "peak oil community" has egg on its face about an inch thick. In Aug. 2003, Matt Simmons stated that natural gas armageddon for the US was a certainty within 2 years. Now, here we are 4 years later, swimming in veritable seas of the shit. Read the history, folks. The man is a stooge.

While we're at it, let's also recall that the entire "peak oil community" bought into the "natural gas crisis" hook line and sinker:

Matt Simmons, Dale Allen Pfeiffer, mobjectivist, Julian Darley, Culture Change, dieoff.org, LATOC, Post Carbon Institute, Energy Bulletin, The Oil Drum etc. etc.

And the crisis never came. In fact, the result was exactly the opposite of that predicted.

This huge surge in NG supplies is very important, and very good news. As Robert Rapier says: "It also appears that we have enough natural gas available that civilization isn't going to end any time soon due to lack of energy supplies."

by JD

403. DMITRY ORLOV CONCEDES HE'S AN IDIOT

Still on vacation, but I couldn't resist this one. A couple of days ago, Dmitry Orlov posted a new presentation on his website, well-larded with his usual asinine assertions about the imminent end of industrial civilization etc. etc.

The funny part is that much of it is based on this concept:

François Cellier has recently published an analysis in which he shows that at roughly $600/bbl the entire world's GDP would be required to pay for oil, leaving no money for putting it to any sort of interesting use. At that price level, we can't even afford to take delivery of it. In fact, at that price level, we can't even afford to pump it out of the ground, because the tool pushers, roughnecks and roustabouts that make oil rigs work don't drink the oil, and there would no longer be room in the budget for beer.

And so, the actual limiting price, beyond which no economic activity is possible, is certainly a lot lower, and last summer we seem to have experimentally established that to be around $150/bbl. which is something like 25% of global GDP.

Scary stuff, except the figures are totally bogus.

$150 oil would not constitute 25% of the world's GDP.

The world consumed 84 million barrels/day in 2008 (from the BP statistical review 2009). At $150 per barrel, that comes to $12.6 billion a day, or $4.6 trillion per year.

The CIA Factbook 2009 gives world GDP for 2008 as $69.49 trillion.

Therefore sustained $150 oil would only account for 4.6/69.49 = 6.6% of world GDP, not 25% as Orlov fraudulently states.

Similary, if oil rose to $600 a barrel, that would cost roughly $50 billion/day, or $18.25 trillion per year.

Clearly $600 oil cannot consume the entire world's GDP because

$18.25 trillion < $69.49 trillion

It would take something a little closer to $2240 per barrel to consume the world's GDP.

*****

You can see where Orlov screwed up if you compare his comment with the original analysis by Cellier. Here's the quote from Orlov:

François Cellier has recently published an analysis in which he shows that at roughly $600/bbl the entire world's GDP would be required to pay for oil, leaving no money for putting it to any sort of interesting use.

Here's the source quote from Cellier:

This means that, if ever the price of energy should rise to a level of $0.37/kWh, we would spend our entire GDP just on the procurement of energy. This corresponds to an oil price of $590/barrel.

Notice the little switcheroo there boys and girls?

The really funny part is that he delivered this presentation at some cheesy doomer jamboree called The New Emergency Conference and NOT ONE PERSON bothered to check his figures. Then he posted the presentation on his blog, and it was commented on by more than 40 fawning idiots, and NO ONE bothered to check his figures. No critical thought was anywhere to be seen. Nothing but wall-to-wall brown-nosing: "Fabulous, Dmitry." "What an absolutely amazing and thoughtful essay." "Marvelous" "Brilliant!"...

I submitted a comment pointing out Orlov's mistake on his blog. However, Orlov heavily moderates the blog, and buried the comment by not posting it. Apparently the facts are not welcome at ClubOrlov.

This incident really speaks volumes about sycophancy and gullibility in the peak oil community.

2009/6/20 update:
Orlov has now formally conceded that yours truly gutted him like a fish, and his figures are complete bullshit (Read down in the comments. Orlov calls himself "kollapsnik". Hat tip to LoneSnark for smoking him out.):

Orlov:

Some people have pointed out that I misquoted François Cellier:

"François Cellier has recently published an analysis in which he shows that at roughly $600/bbl the entire world's GDP would be required to pay for oil..."

Here's the analysis: http://europe.theoildrum.com/node/5388#more

Please substitute "energy" for "oil" and $590 for $600.

Orlov:

I said "oil" whereas I should have said "energy". [...] I don't care about arithmetic very much at all.

2009/7/2 update:
Another (more formal) apology from Kamrade Orlov.
Reading the comments to the blog article, I was amused to see that Dmitry had a presentation (tickets: $20-30) scheduled in NYC for July 11, 2009, but it was cancelled due to lack of interest. Apparently only 18 people in the entire 5-borough area expressed any interest. LOL

by JD

402. ON VACATION

After about 5 years of posting on this topic, I've decided to take a vacation due to peak oil burnout. Life is short, and I'd like to do some interesting things besides the day-to-day grind of the peak oil community. Of late, I've found little to stimulate my interest in the peak oil media, and in fact, I find peak oil commentary to be mind-numbingly boring and repetitive. How many Kunstler or Heinberg screeds do you really need to read? They're all the same. Endless rehash of the same leftovers, day after day, like dogfood...

Just to be clear: I'm not taking time off because "the world is falling apart" or any other doomer nonsense. In fact, I find it amazing how little impact "peak everything" has on my daily life. My firm conviction, as always, is that peak oil will occur in extreme slow-motion, and that's why it will be fairly easy to weather and adapt to. It's also why it's a little silly to follow it obsessively on a daily basis.

Anyway, thanks to all my staunch readers for your support. I'll be back, just not as often, so I hope you'll pop in from time to time.

I'll leave this thread open to post ideas, news or suggestions for other sites debunkers might enjoy.

JD

401. WRONG TOMORROW

Short post today. I just want to call everyone's attention to a new site called WRONG TOMORROW. The site is self-explanatory, and all the regulars here will quickly perceive its value. It's accountability time for the tidal wave of self-styled "prophets" now infesting the Internet. Spread the word, and let's give Maciej a helping hand in this important work.

JD

400. MORE ELECTRIC TRUCKS

Five years ago, when I first got involved with peak oil, electric and hybrid trucks weren't even a concept. A little over a year ago, when I first posted on the subject they still seemed fairly exotic. Now, in 2009, an amazing amount of progress has taken place, and the technology for both EV and HEV (hybrid EV) trucks is rapidly filtering into the mainstream. It's becoming increasingly clear that peak oil will have little impact on tasks such as local trucking, garbage collection, and grid maintenance. Peak oil is simply occurring too slow compared to the rate of truck innovation and dissemination.

EATON
Eaton is a manufacturer of hybrid drivetrains for medium and heavy-duty trucks. Just a couple of days ago, President Obama spoke at the preview of a PHEV utility truck made by Eaton, EPRI and Ford:

The plug-in hybrid truck is the first of five “boom and bucket” trucks based on a Ford F-550 chassis that will be provided by Eaton, EPRI and Ford to public and private utility fleets in the United States for use and evaluation. In addition to fuel and emissions savings while the truck is on the road, additional energy savings are available by utilizing the electric side of the system to power the ancillary systems and tools when the truck is stopped at a work site.Source

ATCO, an Alberta electric utility, is also introducing an HEV utility bucket truck Source. American Electric Power, a mid- and southern US electric utility has 4 International Durastar hybrid bucket trucks with Eaton drivetrains, and 18 more on order Source. A Michigan beer distributor recently purchased 15 medium-duty International DuraStar hybrid tractors made by Navistar with an Eaton drivetrain Source. Kraft is adopting the Durastar hybrid for transport of frozen foods Source. Honda is testing a Class 8 hybrid diesel truck made by Peterbilt (Paccar) and Eaton Source.

BALQON
The heavy-duty electric trucks being used in the Port of Los Angeles, which I described 6 months ago are now in full production. The assembly line is finished, and Balqon will first be producing 20 units for the Port of LA Source. Note that Balqon's Nautilus E30 Class 8 heavy-duty EV truck, and their Mule M-150 7-ton medium duty EV truck, are both equipped for fast-charging Source. Balqon is using AeroVironment's PosiCharge fast charge system for the Port of LA trucks Source.


SMITH ELECTRIC VEHICLES
The Smith Newton 7.5 to 14 tonne all-electric commercial truck from Smith Electric Vehicles, which has been in use in Europe for 3 years, will soon be rolled out in North America Source. Smith's UK customers include: Babcock Airports, Continental Landscapes, TK Maxx, BSkyB, DHL, TNT Express, Openreach, Sainsburys, Royal Mail, CEVA Logistics, Scottish & Southern Energy, Crown Records Management, Translinc, yoyo and Balfour Beatty Source.



MODEC
UK manufacturer Modec offers trucks in a number of styles, with a range up to 100 miles, maximum speed of 50mph, and payload of 2 tonnes. They have sold 150 vehicles since production started in 2007. Customers so far include: Tesco, UPS, FedEx, M&S, Network Rail, Speedy Hire, Stadsdeel Amsterdam Oud Zuid, CenterParcs, Hildon Water, Stadstoezicht Amsterdam, CESPA (Madrid), Deret Group (France), and UK Local Authorities (Modec vans) Source.


FORD
Ford has announced a tie-up with Smith Electric Vehicles to market a fully electric version of its Transit Connect panel van in 2010. Ford will provide the chassis, brand and marketing, and Smith will integrate the EV technology Source.

EVI
Electric Vehicles International is a new player, which apparently has a significant marketing presence in Mexico. It is now offering the customizable eviLightTruck in 3 configurations -- Class 3, Class 4 and Class 5-6 -- for the US market Source.

UPS
In May of 2008, UPS ordered 200 HEV trucks with drivetrains made by Eaton (the largest HEV order in the industry to date), and 300 CNG trucks Source. In October, they ordered 7 hydraulic hybrids, and in November, they announced an order of 12 EV trucks produced by Modec, for deployment in the UK and Germany in early 2009 Source.

UPS currently has the largest alternative fuel fleet in the parcel industry, with more than 1,500 compressed natural gas, liquefied natural gas, propane, hydrogen fuel cell, electric and hybrid electric vehicles Source.

RYDER
Ryder is offering the RydeGreen medium-duty hybrid truck based on Navistar and Eaton technology. "According to International®, the truck has the potential to provide up to 30 to 40 percent improved fuel efficiency in standard in-city pick up and delivery applications."Source


KENWORTH
In early March 2009, Kenworth (a Paccar subsidiary) received a large hybrid truck order from Coca-Cola Enterprises:

The Kirkland company, a division of Bellevue-based Paccar Inc. (NASDAQ: PCAR), said Coca-Cola Enterprises ordered 150 T370 diesel-electric tractors and 35 T370 hybrid trucks. Kenworth officials didn’t disclose the value of the order but the fuel-efficient trucks are reported to cost around $100,000 each.

Last year, Coca-Cola Enterprises of Atlanta (NYSE: CCE) ordered 120 hybrid delivery trucks from Kenworth. Officials at the distribution company said those hybrid trucks resulted in a 30 percent improvement in both fuel efficiency and greenhouse gas emission reductions, compared with standard delivery trucks.Source

Another good source on this topic is the PESWiki for electric trucks. The Wiki gives an extensive list of firms, large and small, producing electric trucks.

by JD

399. FAST CHARGING

Last week, MIT announced the development of a new type of fast-charging lithium battery:

MIT breakthrough promises lighter, fast-charging batteries

Scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have developed a way to charge lithium ion batteries in seconds, instead of hours, that could open the door to smaller, faster-charging batteries for cell phones and other devices.

[...]

The breakthrough by Cedar and graduate student Byoungwoo Kang is the development of a reengineered surface material for batteries that allows lithium ions to move quickly across the surface of the battery and channels the ions into tunnels. A prototype battery built using this surface material can be charged in 20 seconds or less, compared to 6 minutes for a battery cell that does not use the material, MIT said.

The surface material is not new but is manufactured in a different way. This means batteries that use the faster-charging surface material could be on the market within two to three years, the statement said.

The above is just one approach. A number of fast-charging technologies are already practical and being rolled out. This was also announced last week:

Nissan to trial fast charge electric car network

Pilot project in Arizona promises to charge batteries in less than 15 minutes

The prospect of electric cars that can be recharged within 10 to 15 minutes moved a step closer last week with the announcement of a new pilot project in Arizona.

Car giant Nissan announced that it has signed a partnership with electric vehicle charging technology firm ECOtality and Pima Association of Governments, which represents the Tucson, Arizona region, that will see the three parties work together on rolling out a charging network.

ECOtality said that it would aim to have parts of the public recharging infrastructure rolled out by 2010, in readiness for the US launch of Nissan's zero emission vehicle. Nissan added that under the agreement it would then make a supply of electric vehicles available to the regions public and private fleets.

The Minit Charger fast-charge technology from ECOtality subsidiary eTec was developed in 1996, and 4300 stations are currently in use for fast charging forklift trucks. You can see a video of the Minit Charger in action here.

Toshiba also has an entry in this area, the SCIB (Super Charge Ion Battery):

Toshiba gears up for fast charging battery

Toshiba is to ramp up production of a new type of Lithium Ion battery that can charge to 90 percent of its capacity in a few minutes and is highly-resistant to short circuits.

The Super Charge Ion Battery (SCiB) is a Lithium Ion battery based on proprietary technology developed by the company and is targeted at both industrial and electric vehicle applications and consumer laptop computer use.

Production of the battery, which has been in development for several years, has already begun for the industrial market at the relatively low volume of 150,000 cells per month.

Toshiba will increase that to several tens of millions of cells per month at a new factory it plans to build in Kashiwazaki in Niigata prefecture in north west Japan, it said last week. Construction of the factory will begin in late 2009 and production is scheduled to begin a year later, said Hiroko Mochida, a Toshiba spokeswoman.

Initial production at the factory, which represents an investment of several tens of billions of yen (several hundred million US dollars), will likely be aimed at the industrial and electric vehicle markets although the same lines will be able to make SCIBs for laptop computers, she said.

At September's Ceatec show in Japan Toshiba demonstrated a laptop running on an SCIB. The battery will keep its performance through up to 6,000 recharges -- more than ten times that of typical Lithium Ion batteries -- meaning a laptop should be able to run its lifetime on the SCiB without need to replace the battery. Due to its design it is also much less likely to catch fire or short circuit if crushed or damaged.

Toshiba is collaborating with Schwinn on a fast-charging electric bicycle powered by the SCiB:
New Schwinn fast charging electric bicycle

In September 2008 Schwinn Bicycles announced a strategic collaboration with Toshiba Corporation that they think is going to dramatically improve the uptake of electric bicycles around the world. Schwinn presented the results of this collaboration at the recent Interbike International Bicycle Expo in the form of the Tailwind.

The Tailwind incorporates Toshiba’s new Super Charge ion Battery (SCiB) technology. The SCiB technology will enable Tailwind owners to recharge their battery in 30 minutes through a standard electrical outlet or as little as five to seven minutes through a commercial charger. By comparison, it takes four hours or longer to fully recharge the battery of most other electric bicycles.

Here's a fast charging battery technology for buses:

Proterra claims electric vehicle batteries can recharge in 10 minutes

Battery recharging times remain a major obstacle for electric vehicles. But perhaps not for long. Proterra claims that its new all-electric buses can recharge in as little as ten minutes.

Last week the company demonstrated one of its buses in San Jose (see the video below). Seattle and San Francisco are also considering buying the Proterra's buses.

More info on Proterra here.

Last week, it was also announced that the Tesla will have 440V fast-charge capability, similar to the Minit Charger specs. Apparently Nissan's upcoming TBD all-electric car will also have the ability to fast charge in 26 minutes.

It would seem that fast charging technology is already here.

by JD

398. ELECTRONICS STORES SELLING TRANSPORTATION

Here's an interesting new wrinkle I hadn't thought of. The US electronics/appliance retailer BestBuy is planning to market an electric motorcycle, The Brammo Enertia:

Best Buy is getting into motorcycles – think Geek Squad in mechanics' coveralls.

The consumer electronics store chain is going to start selling the Enertia electric motorcycle made by Ashland, Ore.-based startup Brammo at five of its West Coast stores in May, CEO Craig Bramscher said Friday.

In time, Bramscher envisions the $12,000 Enertia, as well as Brammo's upcoming lighter-duty and heavier two-seater models, being sold across Best Buy's chain of 1,200 U.S. stores, as well as some of its 1,500 or so stores in Europe and its 270 stores in China.Source

Here's the photo and the specs:

Top speed: 50+ mph
Recharge time: ~3 hrs
Range: 35-45 miles
MPG equivalent: 276
Price: US$ 12000

This one's a little pricey, but even today it has dozens of hungry competitors, many at much lower prices. It makes you wonder: are conventional car manufacturers and dealers yesterday's news? Why wouldn't electric manufacturers and retailers muscle in on scooters and other LEVs (Light EVs)? After all, they're just another electrical appliance. Just as we can expect electric companies to behave more like (or be taken over by) oil companies in the coming post-oil EV era, perhaps we should expect existing electronics/electric firms to play an increasing role in vehicle manufacturing and retailing. It's like I said a while back: electric scooters are going to be the next ipod. We'll be stamping them out by the millions, in 8 trendy colors.

by JD

397. DEFFEYES CRAPS OUT AGAIN

Interesting news today from Robert Rapier. Official EIA stats now show that 2008 set a new record for annual oil (crude + condensate) production.

Which means that Ken Deffeyes has crapped out once again, adding yet another flub to his long and sorry list of blown predictions. I've gone into depth about this before, but here's the recap. When we last left him, Ken had erroneously predicted peak oil for:

2000
2003
2004-2008
2004
Nov. 24 2005
Dec. 16 2005
Nov. 2005-April 2006

In early 2007, Deffeyes waffled once again -- this time backwards, to May 2005.

The US Energy Information Agency publishes monthly estimates of world oil production at www.eia.doe.gov/ipm/t11d.xls. (Microsoft Office Excel Workbook) Of course, we hope that their estimates are not politically biased. Their current posting shows May 2005 as the month of greatest world oil production. Earlier, I estimated that the peak would be in December, 2005, but May will do. I'll take it. I'll take it.Source

As you would expect, this latest adjustment also turned out wrong. According to the very spreadsheet Ken references, the May 2005 level 74.241kbd was surpassed in July 2008, reaching 74.831kbd. Naturally, he had nothing to say about this on his website. For him, making predictions is like a bear shitting in the woods. Just kick some dirt over the last one when it starts reeking, and grunt out the next one.

Of course, there's always the old standby: "We'll see who gets the last laugh, JD. Someday Ken's going to be right." Actually, I would dispute that. My current conjecture is that oil will never peak as long as Ken Deffeyes is making predictions. That's how truly rank his predictions are. But whenever Ken finally shuts up and oil actually peaks, it's not going to be Ken who is proven right. We're all going to be proven right. Me, Mike Lynch, Daniel Yergin, CERA... literally everyone (aside from the mentally retarded) concedes that oil will peak. So on that glorious day when we're all proven right, I say we all go out for a rousing mutual backslap and group hug!

More broadly, we should note that Ken, like many peak oilers, has been trying to stack the deck by restricting his prediction to conventional crude. The reality is that Ken's "peak" is being swamped by flows of unconventional liquids such as tar sands and (most importantly) NGL, as you can see in the IEA figures for total liquids:

A while back, Ken liked to talk about the "Cornucopian Cemetery", where cornucopians go when they admit that oil has already peaked. We have a similar feature here at Peak Oil Debunked. I call it the Peak Oil Prophet's cemetery. It's where you go after your 9th incompetent prediction of the peak oil date craps out.

Hey Ken. Your ride is here.

by JD

396. NUCLEAR POWER UPDATE

(Image from M. King Hubbert's 1956 paper "Nuclear Energy and the Fossil Fuels")

Kentucky House panel approves nuclear bill

The Tourism Development and Energy Committee of the Kentucky House has approved a bill that could lead to the lifting of a 25-year-old moratorium on the construction of nuclear power plants within the US state.

Georgia lawmakers OK early recovery of nuclear costs

The Georgia House voted Thursday to let Georgia Power Co. begin charging customers for a planned nuclear power plant five years before it is due to go into service.

The bill, which passed 107-66, already has cleared the Senate and now heads to Gov. Sonny Perdue for his signature.

It would allow the utility to recover $2 billion in financing costs for the $14.4 billion expansion of Plant Vogtle near Augusta. Georgia Power plans to charge ratepayers $1.30 per month for the plant in 2011, when construction is due to begin.

The charge would continue to increase by that amount each year until 2016, when the first of two new nuclear reactors is scheduled to begin operating.

Iran tests first nuclear power plant in Bushehr

Iran began testing out its first nuclear power plant on Wednesday in the southern port of Bushehr, the New York Times reports.

Iranian officials say that fuel rods made of lead were used in place of nuclear fuel in order to test the 1,000 megawatt, Russian-built nuclear plant, according to the ISNA student news agency.

Deputy head of Iran’s Nuclear Energy Organization Mohammad Saeedi told reporters that the fuel rods contained lead instead of the usual uranium.

Meanwhile, Sergei V. Kiriyenko, the head of the Russian nuclear agency which helped built the power plant, said that the plant was “nearing its final stages before launching,” during his visit to Iran and that the construction was finished.

Russia supplied Iran with the nuclear fuel to build the plant under arrangements of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which is the same UN agency that monitored the nuclear plants in North Korea’s Yongbyong.

According to an IAEA report released last week, Iran is planning on loading fuel during the second quarter of 2009.

Most Asean members want nuclear power

Most of the members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations are amenable to tapping nuclear power to promote alternative sources of energy, an official said yesterday.

They expressed support for the idea even as they prepared to sign an agreement today that will allow governments to sell their oil to neighbors at “friendship” prices.

“Nuclear energy is being seriously looked at, but we are still very much at the preliminary discussion stage, at the technical working group level,” Asean Deputy Secretary General Pushpanathan Sundram said in an interview during the Asean Business and Investment Summit.

“There are some that are opposed to it, while others are pushing for it,” he said.

Those in favor of creating or reactivating nuclear plants are Thailand, the Philippines, Vietnam, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar and Indonesia.

After a 20-year ban, France helps Italy embrace nuclear energy

Twenty years after banning new nuclear plants, Italy is turning to France to restore its nuclear program.

On Tuesday, Italy’s Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi signed a cooperation deal with President Nicolas Sarkozy for the construction of four power plants in Italy.

Italy shut down its four nuclear plants following a 1987 national referendum that rode a wave of fear and outrage over Russia’s Chernobyl reactor meltdown. Now it is joining a growing number of European countries – including Germany, Slovakia, and Bulgaria – that are returning to nuclear energy due to concerns both about carbon emissions and about the reliability of energy supplies from Russia.

Workforce education for a nuclear energy revival

A rapidly growing demand for more electricity – from cleaner energy sources – has nuclear power poised for a revival in the United States.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) expects companies in the energy industry to apply in the next two years for construction and operation licenses for more than 30 nuclear power plants.

To respond to the demand for more expertise in the field, the Ira A. Fulton School of Engineering at Arizona State University is launching a graduate-level program in nuclear power generation.

Wisconsin regulator says nuclear should be an option

Wisconsin Public Service Commission Chairman Eric Callisto told attendees at an energy conference Monday that he believes legislators will end the state's ban on new nuclear power plants. But Tia Nelson, co-chairwoman of the Governor's Global Warming Task Force, called nuclear energy a "distraction" from efforts toward conservation and energy efficiency.

Oklahoma nuclear power bill advances in committee

Oklahoma lawmakers signaled their interest to go nuclear, approving legislation that would streamline the state's regulatory process and provide new incentives to build a nuclear power plant.

Toshiba wins US nuclear plant projects

Japan's Toshiba Corp. said Wednesday it had won a contract to build two nuclear plants in the United States that are scheduled to start generating power in 2016.

It is the first such contract a Japanese company has won overseas, covering the projects entirely from engineering and procurement to construction of the nuclear plants, the company said.

Under the contract, Toshiba America Nuclear Energy Corp., a US-based Toshiba subsidiary, will build two Advanced Boiling Water Reactor (ABWR) nuclear power plants in Texas.

The plants, the first ABWRs to be constructed in the United States, will have an output of approximately 1,400 megawatts each, the company said.

Two new nuclear power stations planned for Cumbrian coast

Two new nuclear power stations could be built on farmland in west Cumbria, as well as those already predicted for the Sellafield site.

A German energy firm has revealed plans to build reactors on coastal sites near Egremont and Millom. These are separate to plans for reactor development on land around Sellafield.

W.Va. lawmakers propose nuclear power ban repeal

Some West Virginia lawmakers hope to add nuclear power to the state's energy portfolio.

A bipartisan group of senators has introduced legislation to repeal a partial 1996 ban on the building of nuclear power plants.

"A ban is inconsistent with West Virginia's claim that it is an energy state," said Sen. Brooks McCabe, the bill's lead sponsor.

Algeria to erect nuclear Power plant

The Algerian government has announced its plans to erect the first ever nuclear power plant by 2020, Energy and Mining Minister Chakib Khelil has said.

Minister Khelil said Algeria will also build new plants every five year after the erection of the fisrst station.

The Minister said Algeria has already signed civil nuclear agreements with Argentina, France, China and the United States. “Algeria presently has two experimental nuclear plants in Draria, in the suburbs of Algiers and another one in Ain Oussera, near Djelfa about 300 kms from capital Algiers,” he said, stating that further negotiations were underway with Russia and South Africa.

Jordan, Russia sign nuclear deal

Russia, which is helping Iran build its first nuclear plant, inked a preliminary cooperation deal with Jordan on Thursday to pave the way for producing nuclear power in the energy-poor kingdom.

Under the agreement, Russia will help Jordan, which imports around 95 percent of its energy needs, build power and desalination plants as well as research centres, Jordan Atomic Energy Commission head Khaled Tukan said.

"A final agreement will be signed in Moscow by the end March," Tukan told state news agency Petra after signing the deal with Nikolai Spassky, deputy director of the Russian Federal Agency for Nuclear Energy.

Yucca Mountain is Dead! Long Live Fast Breeders?!

The Obama administration's new budget essentially kills the Yucca mountain radioactive waste repository project. The original goal was to build a facility in which to safely store high level radioactive wastes from America's 104 nuclear power reactors. Anti-nuke environmentalist ideologues have long opposed the Yucca mountain facility. Their goal is make nuclear power impractical by blocking the waste disposal stream. But perhaps they've outfoxed themselves. nukepower

The new budget promises that the Obama administration will “devise a new strategy toward nuclear waste disposal.” Well, there is already a strategy that will work, using fast breeder reactors to burn up waste and simultaneously produce more reactor fuel.

Now Even “Greens” Are Turning To Nuclear Power

Nuclear power has new converts, according to top UK environmentalists, as they made public their belief that this energy source is still required.

Many have long opposed nuclear power because of the risk of weapons proliferation, as well as the difficulty of waste disposal.

In spite of worries about nuclear power, global warming is seen as a more serious hazard.

Nuclear is seen as an improvement over new coal-fired power plants.

Britain will have a key energy gap over the coming years.

Coal burning power stations and ageing nuclear power facilities will shutdown and the government is obliged to reduce carbon emissions by 80 per cent, not later than 2050.

Therefore, many environmentalists are converting back to nuclear power.

In a momentous piece for the Independent newspaper, a member of the Green Party, a past head of Greenpeace, and Lord Smith, Chairman of the Environment Agency and a prominent columnist, made known their coversion to supporting nuclear energy.

India Targets 6,000-MW of Nuclear Power in 2009

The agreements with AREVA and TVEL come at a time when three reactors in the country are set to commence production. Units 5 and 6 at the Rajasthan Atomic Power Plant (2 X 220 MW), Unit 4 at the Kaiga Power Plant in Karnataka (220-MW) and one unit at the Koodankulam Power Plant in Tamil Nadu (1,000-MW) will go live this year. The steady supply of fuel is expected to boost atomic power production from the existing 17 facilities to about 6,000-MW by the end of 2009, with the reactors expected to operate at about 90 percent of their combined installed capacities.

NPCIL is also embarking on a joint venture with NTPC Limited (New Delhi) to establish new nuclear plants in India based on indigenous "fast breeder reactor" technology. Five other reactors with a production potential of 2,660-MW are already under construction. The Atomic Energy Commission recently said that India would have 20,000-MW of nuclear power by 2020.

German State Calls for Extension of Nuclear Power

Germany’s largest producer of wind- powered electricity, the northern state of Schleswig-Holstein, should extend the use of its three nuclear power plants, a government minister said.

A mix of energy, including nuclear power, is the most sensible way to guarantee energy security and cut carbon-dioxide emissions, said state economy minister Werner Marnette, a member of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s ruling Christian Democratic Party.

The minister’s comments renew the debate over atomic energy ahead of German federal elections later this year and follow Sweden’s Feb. 5 decision to scrap a ban on new atomic plants.

“It’s essential that we allow our three nuclear plants to keep running or we won’t have enough energy,” Marnette said today in an interview in Husum. “Of course, we have to work on the security issues as well as the problem of waste.”

Tender for Armenian nuclear power station

The Armenian Government has announced a tender for holding a competition which will identify which company should undertake the construction of a new nuclear power station in the country. In 38 days the tender commission will announce the winner of this tender, who will then hold the competition and thereby identify the most appropriate power station constructor.

China may help Vietnam build N-reactor

A Chinese firm has started talks to help Vietnam in building its first nuclear power project to reduce electrical shortages in the country.

China Guangdong Nuclear Power Group (CGNPG), one of the two main nuclear power plant operators in the country, announced Monday it was in talks with Vietnam to help the country construct its first nuclear power plant.

According to a report on the website of the Shenzhen-based company, Vietnam plans to build two 1,000-mW reactors in Ninh Thuan Province on the lower central coast.

Vietnam plans to build nuclear power projects with a total capacity of 4,000 mW by 2021, a CGNPG executive who declined to be named said.

Manitoba town pushes for nuclear reactor

The town of Pinawa, Man., may be in line for a nuclear renaissance.

The town of 1,500, 110 miles northeast of Winnipeg, is in discussions with Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd., to possibly build a nuclear power plant on the site of AECL's Whiteshell Laboratories.

Dale Coffin, a spokesman for AECL, said it's very much in the early discussion stage but said the idea of putting up a nuclear power plant in Pinawa is a good one.

``From our point of view, Pinawa is already a licensed site, there are already experienced people working there, abundant water near by and it's close to the United States and transmission lines,'' said Coffin. ``There are some very positive features there already.''

Third reactor at North Anna nuclear power plant debated

About 100 people turned out last night to argue for and against plans to build a third nuclear reactor at Louisa County's North Anna Power Station.

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission is evaluating the potential environmental impact of a third reactor at the nuclear power plant near Mineral. The agency used last night's meeting to gather public comments.

Sweden lifts ban on nuclear power

Nuclear power received a significant boost today when the Swedish government announced plans to overturn a near 30-year ban on atomic plants as part of a new drive to increase energy security and combat global warming.

Ministers said they would present a bill on 17 March which would allow the construction of nuclear reactors on existing sites and introduce a new carbon tax as part of a programme to cut carbon emissions by 40% on 1990 levels by 2020.

Kuwait eyes nuclear power with French help - paper

Kuwait is considering developing nuclear power with the help of a French firm to meet demand for electricity and water desalination, the country's ruler said in remarks published on Wednesday.

"A French firm is studying the issue," daily al-Watan quoted Emir Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad al-Sabah as saying, adding that the oil-rich Gulf Arab state would only put nuclear power to civilian use and according to international laws.

Nuclear power would "save a lot of wasted fuel in electricity and water desalination plants", he said, giving no further details. The emir did not specifically refer to any French firm in his published remarks.

by JD

395. OIL BULL FALTERING?

Since the crash started in summer 2008, the general view in the peak oil community has been that the current low prices are an anomaly, and that prices will soon return to their upward trajectory. A number of voices are starting to question this view. The main issue seems to be this: Is the economy going to actually recover any time soon?

It reminds me of an inconsistency I often noticed when oil prices were skyrocketing. Many doomers were simultaneously claiming that: a) the economy was dying, and b) oil prices would continue to go through the roof. Something had to give, and as we all now know, that turned out to be claim b).

Now we've got the same contradiction all over again. Naturally the doomers are jazzed that the credit crisis is sending the economy into a death spiral, but at the same time they keep talking about oil prices soaring "when the economy comes back". It doesn't add up. If the financial crisis is a death spiral, the economy isn't going to come back for a long time. I keep wondering, are they just in denial, hoping for their oil portfolios to come back?

Consider the Asian Financial Crisis of 1997. That was peanuts compared to what we've got happening now, and it knocked the price of oil down to $10 a barrel -- equivalent to only $13 a barrel in 2009 dollars. It would seem that oil has a lot more room on the downside.

The Wall Street Journal Blog is starting to wonder:

With already tottering demand getting even weaker, oil bulls are having second thoughts. Barclays Bank, which for months has warned oil prices will rebound because of supply shortages, slashed its 2009 forecast for Brent crude to $61 from $70.

Another skeptic says the unthinkable in Your Oil Stocks Aren't Coming Back:

Remember when Intel (INTC), Microsoft (MSFT), Dell (DELL), Lucent (ALU), Yahoo (YHOO) and Cisco (CSCO) ruled the markets? There was an era, roughly 1997 to 2000 when those stocks actually mattered. They were important companies doing big things in terms of providing the technology needed for the next century’s communications and internet build-out. And then, they just didn’t matter anymore. Once the dot com bubble burst, every bounce or rally in these names was basically a selling opportunity…for 8 years and counting! See the above chart for a notion of how frustrating it must have been to stay positive on NASDAQ tech names.

It took a long time for people to get it through their heads that these stocks had seen the best valuations and prices that they would ever see. Investors couldn’t imagine a world where these stocks would no longer be important, but with each passing quarter and year, these NASDAQ Generals diminished in stature and market cap.

I believe that this story is repeating itself in the oil patch. Market participants seem to be in a state of disbelief that Chesapeake (CHK), Transocean (RIG), National Oilwell Varco (NOV) and ConocoPhillips (COP) aren't important anymore. These stocks may have have seen the best levels they will ever see, at least for a long time.

Traders talking about "dumb money" in the oil markets:

Flynn expects oil prices to eventually drop well below $30 a barrel in coming months as manufacturers cut operations and millions of laid off workers stop commuting to work.

"We're getting ready for a tailspin, but you just don't know what's going to happen," Flynn said. If it weren't for the new federal stimulus package and promises of further OPEC production cuts, "we'd probably already be there."

Trading on the Nymex has been erratic because of a influx of "dumb money" entering the market, analyst Stephen Schork said. Amateur investors are flocking to energy funds that have bet crude prices will eventually spike again.

"They're looking at the fact that crude went to $150 a barrel a year ago, and its in the 30s today," Schork said. "They think it's going back up."

More in the same vein from Rigzone (hat tip to OilFinder):

Oil Cos' Bet on Swift Price Rebound Has Its Risks
Major oil companies are trying not to repeat the mistakes of the last price slump in the late 1990s, when cutting back on investment left them ill-prepared to meet growing demand in later years. This time they promise to maintain investment through the current price dip, but the risk is growing that a prolonged slump could stymie their plans.

If the years ahead follow the pattern of the last major recession in the early the 1980s, where global oil demand shrank during the downturn and remained well below production capacity for years, even as the recovery accelerated, prices may stay low for much longer than current expectations. Steady as she goes may be their mantra for 2009, but oil chiefs may be on course for some tough choices in 2010.

[...]

We are barely six months past the last peak in the oil price, but OPEC already has 8 million barrels a day of spare oil production capacity after big output cuts, said the group's Secretary General Abdullah Al-Badri. The group is very concerned about the impact the economic downturn will have on the medium- and long-term oil demand, he said.

OPEC's spare capacity looks likely to grow. Thanks to investment in the boom years, the world's productive capacity should grow faster between 2009 and 2012 than it did from 2003 to 2008, said a report from U.S.-based consultancy Cambridge Energy Research Associates.

Companies May Face Massive Cash Outflows

If companies do not reduce their upstream investment at all during the current economic downturn, CERA said spare capacity could reach 10 million barrels a day by 2013. "This would be an unprecedented margin and would tend to undermine the oil price," the consultancy said.

by JD

394. CONSERVATION STIMULATES THE ECONOMY

Many newcomers are confused about what we stand for here at Peak Oil Debunked. So today I'd like to describe our basic position, and how we differ from the more pessimistic mainstream of the peak oil community.

The main difference is that the pessimists focus obsessively on the supply side. They are committed to the idea of societal breakdown or collapse, so they constantly fret about supply, like Dave Cohen:

Here's the main point: Can anyone, anywhere, point to a large new secure supply of crude coming online anywhere in the next few (5) years that solves the supply and demand equation in that time frame and beyond? I think not.

When the IEA draws some crazy curve which says world demand is going to be 121mbd in 2030, pessimists like Dave really take it to heart. They genuinely think that the world is going to need that much oil. That is why they are pessimistic. The world will need 121mbd, but it's unlikely that amount will be forthcoming, so the system is going to breakdown.

That's the doomer view in a nutshell, and it's nicely captured in a recent graph from the Oil Drum, which Gail Tverberg uses to terrorize the wide-eyed newbies in her presentations on peak oil:


Note that Gail and her fellow pessimists are very careful to never question the unexamined doomer assumption, i.e. to ask: "Is all that oil really necessary?"

I, on the other hand, am an optimist. I believe that most oil is wasted and conservation is actually quite easy. I don't believe we need most of the oil we are using today, so the failure to meet the 121mbd target is not really a big deal. Like I wrote back to Dave:

The error in your ways is that you are thinking only in terms of supply side solutions. You think that the failure to meet demand is a terrible problem. It's not. Most oil demand is for frivolous, wasteful uses (like single person commuting in the U.S.) It's a form of addiction, and demand destruction isn't a bad thing, it's "healing" or "getting better".

To answer your question: The large new supply of secure crude is going to come from conservation, i.e. U.S. commuters riding two-to-a-car instead of one-to-a-car etc.

It is patently obvious that vast amounts of oil are being wasted, particularly in first world countries. The Hirsch Report itself admits (P. 24) that "67 percent of personal automobile travel, and 50 percent of airplane travel are discretionary". This means that 6.3 million barrels per day (roughly equal to the oil production of Iran+Iraq) are used in discretionary auto/air travel in the US alone. That's huge: 30% of US oil consumption, and 50% of US oil imports. And it's being wasted on non-mission-critical, optional travel. Or consider commuting. The average commute in the US is 16 miles Source. Which means that, in a pinch, half the population could easily commute to work by bicycle. Those with longer commutes can conserve, while still maintaining functionality as usual, by car pooling, or driving a hyper-efficient vehicle, like the Veken hybrid scooter, which is available today for less than $3000, and gets 180mpg (you can see a video here. More info here). On top of that, you can count numerous other demand-side measures, like telecommuting, telepresence, or even gasoline rationing with tradeable credits. You could very easily draft a plan to eliminate half of US oil consumption (10mbd, or 1 Saudi Arabia) simply by trimming waste and lifestyle.

Of course my point here is true, and it carries a lot of force. In fact, I've never met a doomer who didn't immediately acknowledge the validity of this point. There is no genuine "need" for people to commute to computerized desk jobs 100 miles away in 6000 lb. single-occupant SUVs. You don't even have to think about it; it's patently ridiculous. We waste staggering volumes of oil on frivolous lifestyle bullshit.

So the optimist solution is to gradually (or quickly, if need be) eliminate all this waste, and switch over the remaining essential part to alternate power sources. For example, the classic case would be a commuter who switches from a single-occupant 12mpg SUV to a 180mpg hybrid scooter, and then to an ∞ mpg electric scooter driven by solar or nuclear. Radically reduce oil use to the minimum necessary, and then substitute. That's the optimist solution in a nutshell.

Of course, the doomers are fully committed to horror and mayhem, and have a pre-packaged rebuttal to this solution too. They say that conservation and efficiency are poison to our economy because the economy is based on waste, and eliminating waste will send the economy into a death spiral. It sounds plausible the first time you hear it, but if you think about it carefully, you'll see the fallacy.

Consider the classic example: Jane was driving an SUV that got 12mpg. Then she purchased a hybrid scooter for $3000, which gets 180mpg. Assuming $5/gallon gas (due to post-peak conditions), car travel costs $.42/mile and scooter travel costs $0.03/mile. So when she rides her scooter, she's saving about $0.39/mile. At the scooter's top speed of 40mph, she's saving $15.60/hour. She's making as much money driving her scooter as she would working a well-paying second job. She'll pay off the moped in a few months, and after that it's all gravy. Lots of extra money in her pocket is hardly a negative for the economy. That money will get spent somewhere, and the people providing those goods and services will benefit.

This is the key point: Whenever you conserve oil, you also save money, and that money gets spent or invested, stimulating the economy. Unlike money spent on oil, which generally flows out of the country, money saved by conserving oil is far more likely to be spent in a way which stimulates the domestic economy and employment.

A recent study of efficiency efforts in California bears this out:

• Energy efficiency measures have enabled California households to redirect their expenditure toward other goods and services, creating about 1.5 million FTE (Full Time Equivalent) jobs with a total payroll of over $45 billion, driven by well-documented household energy savings of $56 billion from 1972-2006.
• As a result of energy efficiency, California reduced its energy import dependence and directed a greater percentage of its consumption to in-state, employment-intensive goods and services, whose supply chains also largely reside within the state, creating a “multiplier” effect of job generation.
• The same efficiency measures resulted in slower growth in energy supply chains, including oil, gas, and electric power. For every new job foregone in these sectors, however, more than 50 new jobs have been created across the state’s diverse economy.
• Sectoral examination of these results indicates that job creation is in less energy intensive services and other categories, further compounding California’s aggregate efficiency improvements and facilitating the economy’s transition to a low carbon future.

So there you have it. Conservation is the easiest and best solution to peak oil, and it's highly beneficial to the economy. Careful examination shows the pessimist argument to be based on a series of fallacies.

by JD

393. GLUTS AND MORE GLUTS

The oil glut continues...

Crude Oil At Sea Frustrates Efforts At Price Stability

Every time the oil market attempts to ignite a rally, an upsurge from the sea of crude stored on waterborne tankers snuffs it out.

The accumulation of oil held in "floating storage" gained speed in December, as available space in traditional onshore storage hubs dwindled due to the onslaught of excess supplies in the market. This floating storage is now among the biggest impediments to oil prices recovering any of the ground lost over the last six months. Companies are quick to sell cargoes at the hint of a turnaround in the oil market, unleashing a flood of oil onto a near-saturated landscape.

More oil is being produced than recession-stricken economies need, and oil prices have fallen as the extra crude fills storage terminals worldwide. Crude futures prices are down more than 70% from all-time record highs hit in July 2008. Light, sweet crude oil for March delivery on Tuesday settled 46 cents, or 1.1%, lower at $40.32 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

The oil sitting at sea adds an extra layer of uncertainty about the extent of the supply overhang, which traders say must be whittled down for oil prices to rebound.

Tankers carrying up to 2 million barrels each are not counted in government inventory statistics, but can deliver their cargoes anywhere in the world. Ship trackers estimate that up to 80 million barrels may be on the water, or more than twice the amount kept in Cushing, Okla., the largest commercial storage center in the U.S.

An LNG glut seems to be brewing as well. Hate to be repetitive, but whatever happened to that imminent cliff in natural gas that Matt Simmons was hysterically squealing about 6 years ago? With rising domestic production from shale and other unconventional natural gas plays, and now a surge of LNG, we seem to be swimming in the stuff.

Natural gas glut could hit U.S.

As many as seven massive natural gas export terminals are expected to start up overseas this year, expanding worldwide capacity by 20 percent and flooding markets with new supplies of the key power plant and heating fuel. Dozens of new tankers capable of carrying natural gas in a liquefied form are slated to hit the seas.

Just as these new supplies come on line, worldwide demand is expected to drop as the global recession deepens.

Operators of these new facilities are unlikely to cut back production, however, so shipments of liquefied natural gas will most likely head to the deepest markets with the greatest amount of natural gas storage capacity — the United States.
‘Counterintuitive’

“It’s completely counterintuitive,” said Murray Douglas, a global LNG analyst with Wood Mackenzie in Houston, who is predicting U.S. LNG imports will grow 30 percent to 456 billion cubic feet this year and to more than 1.1 trillion cubic feet by 2013.

“We don’t believe Asia and Europe will be in a position to absorb this new production, and the U.S. is the only market that can take it, that has a large amount of storage.”

The wave of imports might even be strong enough to challenge growing domestic natural gas production from various shale formations, including the Barnett Shale near Fort Worth and Fayetteville Shale in Arkansas.

“This can put pressure on U.S. gas prices and could delay the full development of some of the new shale projects,” Douglas said.

Other analysts, including Houston-based Waterborne Energy and Raleigh, N.C.-based Pan Eurasia Enterprises, agree that an American gas import surge may be coming.

Even the Department of Energy updated its LNG import predictions for 2009 recently to include the possibility of such a surge.

And thanks to OilFinder for some more detail:

Surge in US Crude Stocks Blunts OPEC Cuts

OPEC cut crude oil output by nearly 1.3 million barrels a day in January in an attempt to tame the growing supply glut that is anchoring prices near $40 a barrel.

But as the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries tightened the taps, crude oil inventories in the U.S. were growing by 700,000 to 900,000 barrels a day. That growth rate, the most seen in the month of January in 85 years, and the highest in any month since at least October 2002, is a serious setback to OPEC's efforts.

[...]

Biggest Surplus Since 1990

That helped U.S. crude oil inventories balloon by the highest level in years. Crude inventories climbed by at least four times the average January rate over the last five years, which is the biggest rise in the month since 1924, EIA data show.

At 346 million barrels, crude stocks are the most since July 2007, when they topped 351 million barrels.

Crude stocks are sufficient to cover more than 24 days of current refinery demand, compared with a five-year average of 20 days, and the highest level since 1995.

What's more, crude stocks are likely to continue to gain. The EIA expects refinery runs in February and March to average 400,000 barrels a day below current levels.

Jan Stuart, economist at UBS Securities, said he expected refineries to slash operations to be below 70% of capacity on occasion in coming months, compared with an 83.5% rate in the Jan. 30 week. That implies a cut in crude runs of about 2 million barrels a day from current rates.

U.S. crude oil stocks haven't peaked in January in 55 years, data from the EIA show, a further indication of likely gains in coming months. Incentives for refiners to bulk up stockpiles are still in place, even as inventory at Cushing, Okla., the delivery point for the Nymex crude contract, stands at record levels.

[...]

by JD

392. BOOK REVIEW: "THE MYTH OF THE OIL CRISIS"

[This post is by Ari, my co-blogger at POD. --JD]

The Myth of the Oil Crisis (MotOC) is a very recently published book (2008) by Robin Mills on the subject of oil, natural gas, and more broadly, energy. As the title suggests, Mills tackles the notion that we are on the brink of an “oil crisis,” known online largely by the monicker “peak oil,” from which the world will never recover. If Campbell and Laherrére are the professionals that gave the peak oil movement its credentialed weight (by being professional geologists), then Mills is perhaps the antithesis for the “debunking” movement. While the book is flawed, it presents a broad optimistic view of energy reserve availability and potential for development and supply of those reserves in the foreseeable future. What makes the book most important, however, is that Mills demonstrates, using easily accessed sources, that the imminent peak arguments are highly flawed and irrational.

Robin Mills is, according to his biographical blurb, “an oil industry professional with a background in both geology and economics. Currently (as of 2008), he is Petroleum Economics Manager for the Emirates National Oil Company in Dubai. Previously, he worked for Shell.” Mills is a fairly impressive person, even not including his graduate degree from Cambridge University (in petroleum geology), Then again, so are many of those who currently write about oil depletion from the “peak oil” side. What makes Mills different? For one, he's relatively young (born in 1976). But more importantly, he is someone who is currently in the thick of the oil business in the Middle East itself. Unlike many “peakniks,” Mills actively participates in the energy production business as I write this review. He is not some “armchair analyst” like many of us, and has more of a “veteran view” than many others seem to demonstrate.

Mills sets the stage by placing the oil commentators into five camps (examples chosen by me): The Geologists (Campbell, Laherrére, Deffeyes), The Economists (Odell, Lynch, CERA), The Militarists (who are actually made up of the militarists, media, and mercantilists), the Environmentalists (Greenpeace et al.), and the Neo-Luddites (Heinberg). It is important, I believe, to note that “The Geologists” doesn't refer to petroleum geologists, per se, but because they worked at some point in their careers as professional geologists. Mills notes that they can also be referred to as “Malthusians,” which is a fairly fitting appellation. Some may object to the rather broad categories that Mills uses to group the various commentators, however. After all, some actors clearly align with more than one camp. Nonetheless, it serves as a useful way to group the widely divergent views of the oil commentary community.

Mills' book's greatest strength is its ability to deconstruct the most frightening of the peak prophecies and show how they are either incorrect, or at the very least, misguided. He is thorough in demonstrating, through both data, and clear, well-sourced arguments, how the extreme pessimists of the energy commentary community are generally incorrect in their arguments and assumptions. He even demonstrates how Hubbert, commonly hailed as a sort of “peak oil prophet” (words mine), was hardly as accurate as he is shown to be. In fact, Mills scrutinizes Hubbert in the fourth chapter, entitled “Half-Full or Half-Empty?” Hubbert, despite his supposed accuracy, was actually fairly inaccurate on a lot of important issues, as Mills demonstrates in the following bullet points:

• Hubbert actually proposed 1965 as his most likely peak date (US oil production); 1970 was a fallback if secondary recovery proved to be more successful than he expected (as it did)

• Although arguably correct on the date of the peak, he was wrong about its height: total annual US production in 1970 was 20 percent (emphasis mine) higher than he expected...

• He forecast that world oil production would peak between 1995 and 2000 at 33 million bbl/day. The true figure was 75 million bbl/day in 2000, and it has continued to rise subsequently.(MotOC pg. 42.)

Mills also demonstrates that the Hubbert curve, despite being seen as a sort of sacred truth of petroleum geology, fits many countries' production curves rather badly (notably the UK and Iraq) (pp 40-41.) He also-- rather adeptly, in my opinion-- demonstrates that peakniks are extremely pessimistic relative to nearly every other professional estimate of reserves. In fact, where Campbell says that the world has a total endowment of around 2000 billion bbl of oil, even the second most pessimistic estimate (Bentley) gives the world over 3000 billion bbl of oil-- that's a significant difference! Moreover, both Campbell and Bentley are over 1000 bbl behind the most conservative “non-peaknik” estimate of over 4000 billion bbl by CERA (supposed "Pollyannas," no less!). A key difference, Mills notes, is that everyone but The Geologists allows for significant reserves growth. An example of this is the reserve growth of around 69 billion bbl from the 2000 USGS review to its 2005 self audit, which amounts to nearly half of Campbell's YtF (yet to find)! If nothing else, the book demonstrates rather clearly that the peaknik community is beset in all directions by an institutionalized form of pessimism that rarely follows reality.

Another strength of Mills' book is the credence he pays toward economic factors. He shows, throughout the book, that economic factors play a significant role in energy production. One of the often ignored (or derided) factors in energy is the capital needed to keep it running smoothly. The Geologists see geography as the ultimate factor in deciding energy availability, but they are far too willing to ignore the fact that even assuming you have a powerful physical limitation in place, you cannot drill oil if you lack rigs and manpower. Unfortunately, we live in a world today where the physical and human capital needed to run the oil industry has become significantly scarcer than in decades past-- this is largely a consequence of the previous decades of incredibly cheap oil. These same low prices drove OPEC to reduce production as well, which allowed oil commentators (Simmons, for example) to say that Saudi Arabia is in a state of decline. Unfortunately for Simmons, KSA was merely responding rationally to low prices by reducing production. The reader will see a lot of this kind of debunking throughout the book. For some, it will be interesting to see the shriller voices of energy commentary dismantled. For many readers of this blog, however, it will be a rehashing of what has been said here by JD and others. Nonetheless, it is important stuff, and Mills does a good job of taking out some of the more pernicious fallacies with sound economic thinking.

Other topics that Mills deals with are unconventional oil, backdating (one of the more irritating traits of The Geologists), natural gas, geopolitics, demand, and finally the environment. I am glad to say that he does a good job of dealing with unconventional oil (it's not as impossible to produce as some say), backdating (basically, contemporary reserve growth is moved back in the past in order to make it look like we ain't finding more!), natural gas (energy of the future, he argues), and demand (not necessarily going to grow exponentially forever.) I was less impressed with his environmental arguments, mostly because I think he arrives from a strange foundation (The Stern Report). Regardless of my misgivings with his use of what I see as an unnecessarily alarmist paper, I believe it is a positive step to see petroleum executives treating CO2 emissions as a serious issue.

However, like I said at the beginning, there are problems with MotOC. For one, it is somewhat too technical for most laypersons to read without some difficulty. Mills does a commendable job with explaining the terminology as best as he can, but I sometimes found myself flipping to the glossary to relearn terms that I had forgotten from previous chapters. I also found myself occasionally having to reread sentences to figure out what Mills meant because he occasionally inserted sentences of length and complexity that would make Proust weary. While this is fine for an academic market that is used to dealing with long, convoluted prose, the book seems to be marketed more broadly toward a “well-educated” market. While Mills' sometimes awkward prose is not an overly serious issue, it does detract from the experience.

Overall, however, I recommend this book to the “armchair energy analysts” and anyone else who is interested in the topic of energy markets. It may not be groundbreaking for those of us who read this particular blog on a regular basis, but it is a useful text in the sense that it puts a great deal of important data at your fingertips, as well as giving a great deal of insight into the market itself. It is a challenging read, but it is definitely worth the time spent. I doubt it will turn any “doomers” or “peakniks” into optimists, but it will definitely put a lot of things into context for both “debunkers” and those sitting on the fence about the future. It is also, in my opinion, a good text to recommend to friends who stumble on to the “peak oil” scene for the first time, if only to give them insight into how flawed most of the doomsday arguments really are.

by Ari

391. GEOTHERMAL UPDATE

Video on EGS (Enhanced Geothermal Systems) featuring incoming US Energy Secretary, Steve Chu:



Yukon Energy cranks up search for geothermal heat source

Yukon Energy Corp. will spend about $285,000 this year to try to find an affordable source of geothermal power, the utility says.
The utility is contributing the money towards a research project to study the Yukon's geothermal potential.

Tata Power to set up geothermal, solar plants in Gujarat

Mumbai: Tata Group company Tata Power Monday said it is looking at the possibility of setting up a geothermal power plant and a solar power plant of 5 MW each at a suitable location in Gujarat, a move that will strengthen the renewable energy portfolio of the company.

Baoshan energy park uses geothermal pumping system

HANGING food above cool water in a well used to be one of the most popular ways to keep it cool in summer, and so did blocks of ice for ice boxes in the days before refrigerators that ran on electricity.

Now that old approach - using the constant temperature of underground water - is again being used today for air conditioning.

The idea of the small well has been enlarged to more than 10,000 square meters in northern Shanghai's Baoshan District.

In an energy conservation center in Baoshan, you can see a line of round holes in the wall of the conference hall.

It's air conditioning for the Shanghai International Energy Conservation and Environmental Protection Park.

On Campus: Geothermal energy coming to University of Wisconsin-Madison

Drilling began last week for a geothermal heating and cooling system for the future Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery — the first research facility at the University of Wisconsin-Madison to use the economical energy source.

The system, which uses the relatively constant temperature of the earth to regulate building temperature, will provide an annual 10 percent savings on energy use.

Warm up to geothermal heating-cooling

Geothermal heating and cooling is becoming a hot topic in the Great Falls area for people thinking about building new, larger homes.

This heating system leans green but costs at least one-fourth more than a conventional heating and cooling system, according to Ron Walker, service manager at Central Plumbing and Heating in Great Falls.

Diggingdeeptobringpower to the people

FROM MPs to famous novelists, everyone is warming to the idea of geothermal energy, says Environment Correspondent KELLEY PRICE

There is massive potential in the Tees Valley because ground source heat is ideally suited for off-gas houses - Adam Woodhead, Geocore

CHANNELLING heat from the earth for electricity has been pioneered in countries such as Sweden and Germany for years, but while the technology may not be new, it’s suddenly a hot topic among the green crusaders.

Redcar company Geocore has seen its turnover treble in the last two years, since it branched out into borehole drilling for ground source heat pumps.

Their national client list reads like a who’s who of famous names and places - including Labour MP Clare Short and the author behind the Hollywood hit Golden Compass, who both had their London homes fitted with the carbon-saving system.

At the other end of the geothermal spectrum, a £32.5m pioneering project has been launched in the South-west to create seven geothermal power stations - and similar deep drilling technology to access heat from hot springs is likely to be used at Weardale, which has been identified as having the ideal strata.

Japan geothermal projects pick up after 20 years: report

Several Japanese firms will kick off new projects to build geothermal power plans this year for the first time in nearly two decades, the Nikkei business daily reported on Saturday.

Mitsubishi Materials Corp, Electric Power Development Co, or J-Power, Nittetsu Mining Co Ltd and Kyushu Electric Power Co will lead the way, and the government plans to step up support for geothermal power station development, it added.

With active volcanoes scattered around the country, Japan is well-placed to tap geothermal energy as a power source and the attraction of a domestic source of energy is also fuelling the drive, the newspaper said.

Maryland Elementary School Installs Geothermal System

Lincoln Elementary School in Frederick, Md., is the latest educational institution to use geothermal energy for its heating and cooling needs.

Gazette.net reports that the newly modernized 86-year-old school is the first public school in its county have a geothermal system. The installation is part of the school's green design, and school officials hope to use the geothermal system as part of their effort to achieve certification in Leadership in Engineering and Environmental Design.

Geothermal energy put to test at schools

Some school districts in Arizona are considering geothermal energy to reduce utility costs. Earlier this month, the Cave Creek Unified School District governing board approved the drilling of a test well at its high-school campus.

K.M. Drilling, a Camp Verde firm, will drill a 250-foot test well on Jan. 10 on the campus at Cactus Shadows High School at no cost to the district. Corgan Associates, a Phoenix architecture firm, has spoken with the Paradise Valley Unified School District about a similar project.

Utah startup hits geothermal jackpot

Within six months of discovering a massive geothermal field, a small Utah company had erected and fired up a power plant — just one example of the speed with which companies are capitalizing on state mandates for alternative energy.

Anticipation of new energy policies has sparked a rush on land leases as companies like Raser Technologies Inc., based in Provo, lock up property that hold geothermal fields and potentially huge profits.

Raser's find, about 155 miles southwest of Provo, could eventually power 200,000 homes.

The company said it will begin routing electricity to Anaheim, Calif. within weeks.

Ormat gets loan for Kenya geothermal project

Ormat Industries Ltd. (TASE: ORMT) subsidiary Ormat Technologies Inc. (NYSE: ORA)has obtained a $105 million ten-year loan for its Olkaria geothermal project in Kenya. The refinancing is for the 48-megawatt Olkaria III geothermal power plant in Naivasha, in the Rift Valley in Kenya, owned by Ormat Technologies unit OrPower 4 Inc.

Ormat financed the $150 million construction of Olkaria I and II, as well as the drilling of wells, from its own internal sources. Phase II, completed in December 2008, added 35 MW to the project, bringing it to the target capacity of 48 MW. The electricity generated is sold to Kenya Power & Light Company under a 20-year power purchase agreement.

Geothermal heating in action

At the General Theological Seminary in New York City, thoughts, if not eyes, are meant to be cast heavenward. But the oldest Episcopal seminary in the United States also is looking deep underground for a way to heat and cool its buildings.

Earlier this year seven wells were completed that drilled into schist rock formation hundreds of feet below Manhattan island to tap an underground river that flows at a constant 65-degree temperature year round. By circulating that water to the surface, several of the seminary’s handsome 19th-century buildings are being cooled in summer and heated in winter. When the project is completed, 20 such wells will heat and cool the entire campus.

Prospects for Canada’s geothermal industry continue to heat up

We may be living in uncertain economic times, but firms working in the geothermal industry are optimistic that the buoyant sales growth they have enjoyed during the last year will continue, although some flattening of the sales curve may be in store.

“Preliminary reports indicate that the geoexchange industry is growing at between 40 per cent and 260 per cent depending on the region,” said Ted Kantrowitz, vice-president of the Canadian GeoExchange Coalition. “In Ontario, I think the highest profile report has been that heat pump sales have grown about 200 per cent this year.”

Commissioners Look at Jail and Justice Center Geothermal Plans

Mower County Commissioners got to check out plans for the new jail and justice center's geothermal field. County leaders say they want to make sure the energy source would be big enough if the county adds on to the jail and justice center.

Local authorities warm to geothermal energy

The idea of harnessing the heat stored deep underground as a source of renewable energy appears to be gaining ground in Switzerland. Earlier this week the Geneva authorities announced plans for a CHF200 million geothermal project to provide natural heat and energy to thousands of homes. Meanwhile, the city of St Gallen has set its sights on building the country’s first geothermal power station.

Anatomy of an energy-efficient building

The new business and teacher education building at Mesa State College will be the most energy-efficient building on the Western Slope within the next year, according to Xcel Energy.

[...]

Eggleston said the building’s geo-exchange ground-heating system was the deal-maker for the distinction because it supplants boilers and forced-air heating systems such as furnaces to heat the building using the Earth’s natural heat.

[...]

The geo-exchange ground-heating system, built under the field adjacent to the building, sucks temperature from the soil and pumps it into the building. At the time of design, the system was estimated to pay for itself in saved energy costs in 15 years, said spokeswoman Dana Nunn, but it may be sooner because energy costs have gone up.

The Environmental Protection Agency estimates systems such as these can reduce energy consumption by more than 70 percent over heating with conventional air-conditioning systems.

Mesa State included a campuswide geo-exchange system project to submit to the state Legislature that would cost $5.49 million.

by JD

390. THE EROEI OF GARDENING SUCKS

The blowhards of the peak oil community are strongly in favor of gardening as a solution. There are a few problems with this. For example, if you're unemployed, where are you going to get land to garden on? If you already own land, and it's paid off, then you're a rich person, and don't need any help. The people who genuinely need a solution (at least in today's financial crisis) are unemployed people, foreclosed people and poor people, and they don't have any land. And they can't get any land because they need a job to get money to obtain the land. And, as we saw in the previous article, the peak oil community takes a very dim view of net job creation because that would inevitably involve growth.

But let's put those concerns aside for a moment. Let's suppose that you're unemployed, but you just happen to have a quarter acre of idle land lying around. Since this is a fantasy, let's also suppose that you're completely unencumbered by other tasks, and have all the costly organic seeds, shovels, hoes, wheelbarrows, hoses, books and other capital you need to start your own little "local agriculture" shangri-la. First, you'll need to trench the land with a shovel, work in the organic compost, and plant your corn crop. Of course, this will all be done by hand, because dependence on modern energy sources is unsustainable. Watering, hoeing, weeding, pest control, harvesting, shelling and milling will all return to the wonders of a "world made by hand". Here's the unit you'll be using to grind dried corn into meal:

Oops... That looks a little too high-tech and fossil-fuel intensive. Too much embedded eMergy. Plus you'd have to ship it on a diesel-fueled truck to your tent. So you (or more likely your wife) will end up using one of these state-of-the-art "green" units for maximum sustainability:


Okay. You've completed your first cycle of agriculture in harmony with Gaia, and you've got your crop in. How much do you have? Well, let's look back at historical yields (bushels/acre) from the "made by hand" days. This chart is from the USDA (click to enlarge):

I'm figuring we're going to have to go back to at least the 1930-40s to get bona fide made-by-hand yields, but let's be generous and say 50 bushels/acre. You know, maybe you got lucky and turned out to have a green thumb.

You'll have to toss out varmint damage and the disturbing freak show oddities like this one:
But let's suppose you bag a solid 10 bushels. How much value did you clear? Well, corn prices at the moment are about $4 a bushel, so damn if you didn't clear a whole $40 worth of corn for 5 months of backbreaking work! A sum you could have made a lot quicker and easier by working a single 6 hour day at McDonald's:

$6.55 an hour: He's lovin' it

Of course, we're assuming that you're grinding your own corn, so let's do that comparison too. A typical bushel of corn weighs 56 pounds (25.4 kg), so your total harvest -- in terms of corn meal -- will be 560 pounds. The current rate for bulk corn meal is about $15.80 for a 50 pound bag. So your corn meal, which took months to grow and weeks to grind, is worth a grand total of $177. Wow! That's equivalent, by the way, to 3 days of work at a minimum wage job.

Don't get me wrong. I actually enjoy gardening, and used to grow big gardens myself. Gardening is fun, and a good way to get some fresh air and exercise. But the reality is this: it doesn't even come close to making economic sense. If you calculate all your costs -- land, materials, equipment, the value of your time -- and compare them to the value of your output, you'll come out massively in the red every time.

Gardening is basically a bourgeois fantasy, pushed by dilettantes and intellectuals who are well-off enough to indulge in it as a hobby. It's not a genuine solution for the average person, or the poor. Intensive gardening will make those people even poorer, not better off.

by JD

389. GROWTH = JOBS

Through many changes, one thing stays constant in the peak oil community: opposition to growth. Colin Campbell, Kunstler, Heinberg, virtually the entire staff and readership of the The Oil Drum... They all believe that growth is insane, and have vehemently and incessantly attacked it for years.

I think it's high time that we followed this anti-growth agenda to its logical conclusion.

On the surface, an anti-growth site like The Oil Drum seems to be comprised of very smart, rational people who have the best interests of the public at heart. But is that really true?

Well, there's no doubt that the title of this post is true: Growth = Jobs. So a strong case can be made that anti-growth advocates are very much not in the public's corner. The logic is straightforward:

• Anti-growth advocates (The Oil Drum, Heinberg etc.) are in favor of a halt in growth.
• A halt in growth will cause massive unemployment.
• Therefore, anti-growth advocates are in favor of massive unemployment.

To illustrate, here's a piece of standard anti-growth boilerplate from a peak oiler, corrected to reveal the subtext:

Infinite growth Employment has been so hard wired in the brains of so many, that it will be hard for most to imagine themselves out of having never-ending growth a job as an eternal goal.

Not quite so convincing, is it? Anti-growth rhetoric tends to be very smug, particularly since it ignores the central brute fact: there is nothing crazy or stupid or deluded or denialist about trying to keep people employed.

If anti-growth advocates were honest, they would admit that a massive depression (i.e. reversal of growth and shrinkage of the economy) is precisely what they are advocating. Some have already made that connection on the climate front:

Will the Downturn Save the Planet?
Many climate change skeptics and eco-fundamentalists will welcome the economic crisis, although some more openly then others.

[...]

On the other hand, eco-fundamentalists, many of whom define themselves as anti-capitalist, realized that the contradictions inherent in the market system made a major crisis, possibly a slump, inevitable at some point. Unlike Marxists, though, many welcomed this prospect, since they despaired of any other way to tackle climate change apart from economic collapse, which they think could result in a big reduction in greenhouse gasses. Whether they are correct in that assumption is another matter.

Professor Paul Crutzen, who won the Nobel prize for his work on the depletion of the ozone layer, was quoted by the Reuters news agency on October 7: "It’s a cruel thing to say… but if we are looking at a slowdown in the economy, there will be less fossil fuels burning, so for the climate it could be an advantage… we will have a much slower increase of CO2 emissions in the atmosphere… people will start saving [on energy use]."

Cheer up: You're not unemployed -- you're stopping the growth insanity and saving the planet

This line of thought occurred to me when I was reading about Obama's projected stimulus package, so I asked the folks at the Oil Drum about it:

My point is this: if you genuinely believe that we must stop growth because it is killing us (a view which I believe I can fairly ascribe to the vast majority of people on the Oil Drum), then how can you, in good conscience, support measures which are aimed at reigniting growth, such as Obama's upcoming stimulus package and similar packages in other countries?

The responses fell into a few basic types:

1) Don't get pinned down. Change the subject.

2) The dead-end doomer:

"We are GOING to be living in a contracting world, whether we like it or not. My preferences are irrelevant, this is reality and we had best face up to and adjust to it, the sooner the better.
Yes, a great many people will suffer terribly. That is going to happen and can't be helped. Futile attempts to hang on to the past and sustain the unsustainable will not help them, only hurt them even more." WNC Observer

3) Fessing up

"I, for one, am completely in favour of shrinking. Growth would condemn billions of people around the world especially in the poorer parts of Africa and Asia to a continuous life of strife, misery, and violence that is today much worse than the worse Long Emergency scenarios.

The only smart growth is shrinking. That increases the share of the commonwealth available to eash person and decreases the footprint each of us puts on Gaia's neck. We are a heavy burden and we are killing her. And nether can we live without her." Dryki

4) Waffling

"(1) Are there sectors that need to grow--yes.

(2) Are there obese sectors or ancient sectors that need to decline or die--yes.

(3) Is the human economy in its totality too large relative to the planet--yes.

Therefore, any stimulus plan needs to increase 1 and allow 2 to decrease so that total economic scale is reduced." Jason Bradford

[JD: Jason pays lip service to the Obama stimulus -- perhaps because he realizes how far outside the mainstream he'll go if he opposes it. Nevertheless, he adds the condition that economic scale must be reduced -- i.e. that the economy must continue to recess and shed jobs.]

*****

"I could support a stimulus package aimed at reinstating a growth economy if it's primary side effect was to invest in renewable energy and to restructure society to be less energy intensive and more socially cohesive.

What better way to kick-start the economy than spending a trillion dollars on wind power, upgrading the electric grid, developing adaptive (electricity) demand infrastructure, building and electrifying light rail systems, (small) electric or hybrid cars, etc. etc.

Of course the stimulus would fail, as we descend the energy slope, but it would be less painful. The US (and UK, and many other economies) are inevitably going to collapse. Better to use whatever credit the government can still control whilst it still has any, to build for the future." RalphW

5) Little pleasures:

"I happen to have my own boring list of what those are, things like reading, music, art, science, sailing, being with my loved ones, teaching, learning, watching sunsets, drinking good wine etc.. etc..

Not one of the things on my list requires growth." FMagyar

*****

Ludi (responding to my statement "If you're in favor of a halt to growth; you're in favor of unemployment."): "Yep, sure am! I don't work much and I do pretty well (lower middle-class/working class).

Reduce the need to earn, I say. Leisure is wonderful. I spent two hours of my leisure today cutting brush with a handsaw. I'm exhausted but happy."

The Oil Drum pretends to be a community of rational, serious people who will guide us to a better future. I think the evidence points to exactly the opposite, at least if you regard employment as an important feature of that future. As you can see, anti-growth advocates believe that: a) increasing unemployment can't be reversed or even halted, or b) unemployment should be actively boosted by reducing the size of the economy. Meanwhile, their perspective on being unemployed is "art, music, sailing" and learning to enjoy your "leisure".

These views are totally at odds with the need of vast numbers of people to survive and better their lives by obtaining and keeping jobs.

If anti-growth advocates mean to make a serious contribution, they need to cut the self-righteous rhetoric, and address the reality of growth=jobs head on.

by JD

388. OIL PRICES DROP, CONSERVATION CONTINUES

[Note from JD: This is a guest post from Ari, a new contributor here at POD.]

One of the big fears of falling gas prices was that people would hop back into their cars and start driving again. It makes sense, one supposes, that as the cost of a good goes down, then people start consuming it more, right?

Well, life isn't that simple.

The one thing that people often ignore is that consumer decision making is not based only on simple "single variable equations." We don't walk into a store, pick up one item, and decide to buy it solely because its price goes up or down in a specific span of time. We comparison shop. Transportation, despite its being a relatively inelastic good, is not immune to this economic behavior.

And lo and behold, people appear to be comparison shopping, even as gas prices fall.

The Road Less Traveled

Like never before, Americans' travel habits have a special place in our national conversation. The combination of gas price fluctuations, economic stress, energy concerns, and public financing woes have transformed transportation issues from inside baseball to front page news and water cooler conversation.

A primary cause for this attention has been the major shifts in travel patterns. Americans have simply been driving less, when considering both historic growth rates and the most recent annualized measures of vehicle miles traveled (VMT).1 At the same time driving has declined, transit use is at its highest level since the 1950s, and Amtrak ridership just set an annual ridership record in 2008.

Not convinced? Here's more anecdotal evidence of this trend:

Cheap Gas Pulls Few off Bus, Metro

Even before it was costing us $75 a week to fill our gas tanks, as it did this spring and summer, we had already started to change our driving habits in ways unexpected years ago," said John B. Townsend II, AAA Mid-Atlantic's Manager of Public and Government Affairs. "Despite the fact that gasoline prices have been in a freefall since mid-July, consumption is still declining. Last week, U.S. gasoline consumption was lower than it was the same week a year ago."
"People who began to take public transit in 2007 with the rise of higher gas prices are sticking with it now that prices have dropped back down to their lowest level since early 2005, Townsend said.

Delawareans Stick with Public Transit

DART bus usage has backed off a bit since gas prices fell to near $1.50 in recent months, but remains strong. DART buses logged 850,260 fares in October, well up from the 746,731 rides during the same month a year earlier. But it's down from a high of 912,789 rides in July, when gas prices were sky-high.

SEPTA train use on the R2 line, which runs through Delaware, increased from 96,671 rides in October 2007 to 110,020 rides this October. Ridership in October was higher than it was during the summer: in July, riders took 105,768 trips on the line.

"What we believe is when people find out it does work for them, they continue to use it," said Darrel Cole, a spokesman for the state Department of Transportation. "There's nothing better than sitting on a bus, sitting on a train, being able to get work done while someone else drives for you."

Gas Prices Fall, but Ridership Still Rises / During Summer Many Found Public Transit was the Way to go, Groups Say

The nation's public transportation systems saw the largest quarterly ridership increase in 25 years as more Americans shunned their automobiles even as gas prices began to ease, according to industry figures to be released today.

Subways, buses, commuter rail and light-rail systems saw a 6.5 percent jump in ridership from July to September, according to the Washington-based American Public Transportation Association. During the same quarter, Americans drove 4.6 percent less on highways.

The average price for a gallon of gas peaked at more than $4 in mid-July, then began falling.

They may have tried public transportation to get away from high gas prices, but many have since found it works for them," association president William W. Millar said. "I think this year has been a real turning point for the public's attitude toward public transportation."

Riders made 2.85 billion trips on public transportation during the third quarter, up from 2.67 billion trips a year ago. There have been gains in every quarter this year from 2007. Last year's 10.3 billion trips were the most on public transportation in 50 years.

As Gas Prices Fall, Transit Still Popular

Gas prices have plummeted during the past several weeks, but commuters do not appear to be returning to their cars, according to transit officials in the region and elsewhere, who say ridership is still increasing.

Transit officials attributed much of the ridership increase earlier this year to skyrocketing gasoline prices. But despite falling pump prices -- from a national average of $4.11 a gallon in July to $1.82 yesterday -- transit ridership is setting records in some parts of the country, officials said.

For the four months ending in October, Metrorail ridership in the Washington region was up 5 percent over the same period last year, senior planner Jim Hughes said. Preliminary data indicate that November rail ridership is up about 3 percent.

Gas Prices Drop, Bus Ridership Stays Steady (requires log-in)

"Gas prices may have dropped dramatically in the past few weeks, but Windham County residents who discovered the benefits of riding the bus when the cost of gas was high are sticking to their new routines.

Local public transportation like the Brattleboro Beeline and Connecticut River Transit has not seen a decline in ridership.

"We haven't so far, but prices did just drop," said Gary Fox, executive director of Connecticut River Transit.

"If people are going to look at making that kind of switch, maybe it just hasn't happened yet, but I don't think it will," he said.

Fox said there was an increase in people trying public transit when fuel prices were sky-rocketing.

With prices dropping, he thinks it's likely that spike will stop, but not likely that he will lose current riders."

Public Transit Use Up Over Last Year

This is an interesting article because it shows how a poor economy can affect transit in ways we don't often hear:

Commuters who jumped onto buses and trains when gas prices soared stayed on board when prices started falling this summer, but transit operators fear the poor economy will erase the gains.

Ridership on public transit increased 7% to 2.85 billion rides in July, August and September compared with that quarter last year, a report to be released today by the American Public Transportation Association shows. Gas prices began to fall in July after reaching a high of $4.16 a gallon.

"As gas prices rose, more and more Americans made the choice to ride public transit," says William Millar, the association's president. "Now, even though gas prices are falling, Americans tried public transit and many find it convenient."

And yes, some (maybe even most) of this has to do with the economy-- that is clear-- but if the Brookings study is any indication, then we may be seeing a shift in transportation habits in the long run. It's hard to say with any certainty (after all, prediction is a thorny business!), but it is interesting that a good with supposedly highly inelastic demand remains significantly down despite a price decrease of nearly 50%. Like most other "models" that the peak oil community has presented us, oil demand models are overly simplistic and do not account for enough variables. In other words, they have low predictive skill.

More than anything, however, this demonstrates that people are ADAPTIVE. Unlike those silly cartoons on YouTube that show people driving SUVs up and over a cliff to PEAK OIL DOOM, people react to signals and will change behavior fairly quickly. In just a few years, people have started using transit again in numbers that haven't been seen for almost a half-century! Unlike peak oil doomsters, who say that NOTHING WILL STOP DEMAND FROM INEXORABLY RISING, reality demonstrates that people consciously, and rather quickly, change behavior.

Surprise surpise.

by Ari

387. WORLD PHOTOVOLTAIC (PV) PRODUCTION 1990-2007

Here's an interesting graph from the PV Status Report 2008.

No "limits to growth" there. I'll leave the extrapolation of this exponential growth curve as an exercise.

by JD

386. SOLAR POWER UPDATE

Glimpse of the Future: Ota Solar City, Japan

SunPower Completes Smaller Solar Deals With Wal-Mart, Horizon Power

SunPower has deals with Wal-Mart and Horizon Power to install solar systems that are under a megawatt each.
The company recently completed installing a 554-kilowatt solar power system at the Wal-Mart store in Hanford. The system is expected to generate about 15 percent of the store’s electricity and reduce between 7,000 to 8,000 metric tons of GHG emissions per year.

L.A. pursues solar-power surge

Los AngelesMayor Antonio Villaraigosa has unveiled an aggressive solar power plan that aims to encourage the installation of 1,300 mW of solar power throughout the city and surrounding areas of Southern California by 2020.

Christened "Solar LA," the plan addresses solar power systems on residential, commercial, and municipal properties. The plan includes a requirement for the city's municipal utility, the Los Angeles Dept. of Power and Water (LADPW) to install 400 mW of solar power on city-owned property by 2014. By 2020, the utility will be required to procure an additional 500 mW of utility-scale solar power through contracts with third-party developers, with the option to purchase the systems after about eight years of operations.

Solar-powered marina planned in Fort Pierce

Ecocove, a Treasure Coast-based company, plans to build a 20-slip marina on the Fort Pierce Inlet that is thought to be the first of its kind in the state.
The complex would operate on solar power, and any excess electricity could be sold to the city's electric utility, the developers said.

Petrobras mulls solar power to increase well recovery

Brazil's federal energy company Petrobras is mulling plans to use solar power to boost oil recovery, BNamericas reports.
"Our idea is to replace hydrocarbons burn for solar power," according to Luiz Tadeu Furlan, energy efficiency manager at Petrobras' gas and energy department.

Alcatraz Cruises Launches Nation's First Hybrid Ferry Boat

Hornblower Hybrid Is Model of Alternative Energy Innovation
Representatives from the National Park Service, Mayor Gavin Newsom's office, NOAA and Save the Bay were among the 85 people to enjoy a breakfast gathering aboard the nation's first known hybrid ferryboat.
On Friday morning, December 12, at Pier 33 in San Francisco, Alcatraz Cruises, the National Park Service concessioner of ferry service to Alcatraz Island introduced the Hornblower Hybrid, a wind, solar and diesel powered hybrid vessel.

Conergy Asia-Pacific to develop Saudi Arabia's first large-scale solar power plant

Conergy Asia-Pacific (a regional subsidiary of Hamburg-based Conergy AG) has been awarded a contract for a 2-megawatt solar power plant for Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST).

Amid Gloom, Solar Power Finance A Ray of Sunshine

In the booming new market of solar power purchase agreements (PPAs), near-term growth shows modest gains and the long-term outlook is exponential. These are the findings of a new report from AltaTerra Research entitled, Financing Growth: Will Solar PPAs Shine in Dark Times?[...]
"Any growth is a boon for any industry under the current financial conditions,” says Guice. “While growth may not be astronomical, as the solar industry has become accustomed to, gains have been made, and that’s more than a lot of other industries can say.”

Solar power catches on at airports

A hangar at Bob Hope Airport in California has followed the example of other airports by building solar panels in order to ease energy costs.
The rooftop of the $17 million Hangar 25 which is operated by charter flight operator Avjet, has enough solar panels to power lights, forklifts and tow vehicles.
San Fransisco Airport has already invested $5.5 million on the construction of solar arrays on its buildings which can generate enough power to run the entire airport during the daylight hours.

Water Department basks in solar project's success

Hillsboro Water Department has found another use for its Evergreen Reservoir site - power generation. Solar panels installed and brought on line in July have already produced 53 megawatt-hours of power.
Electricity generated by 570 panels is transferred back to the grid and offsets a significant share of the power needed to operate the reservoir's pumps. This sustainable energy source results in substantial money savings for the Utilities Commission and its customers.

Hybrid solar plant will power 11,000 homes

Florida Power & Light Company is gearing to switch to large-scale solar use with a new plant planned for Indiantown.
Billed as the world's first hybrid plant, the Martin Next Generation Solar Energy Center is set to be fully operational by 2010.
It combines natural gas with energy from the sun, instead of relying solely on fossil fuels to generate electricity, officials said.

Duke Wants to Rent Rooftops for Solar Power

North Carolina businesses, homeowners and schools would be able to rent their rooftops to Duke Energy Carolinas for solar power installations, if the utility's plan wins regulatory approval.
The energy company is proposing to invest $50 million over a two-year period in as many as 425 solar energy arrays atop the rooftops of homes, schools, stores and factories — or on the ground at those properties — to establish a solar distributed generation program.

Up on the Roof, New Jobs in Solar Power

MOVE over, Joe the Plumber. Spencer the Solar Panel Installer is here.[...]
Even in the recession, Mr. Bockus has been putting in plenty of overtime for his company, Akeena Solar, which is based in Los Gatos, Calif., and has offices elsewhere in California and in Colorado and the Northeast.[...]
Mr. Cinnamon is now the chief executive of Akeena, which has about $40 million in annual sales and employs 220 workers in seven states. Despite the recession, he estimates that his solar panel installation business will increase 40 percent from last year. [...]
GERRY HEIMBUCH, vice president for operations at the Solar Center in Rockaway, N.J., estimates that his company hires a new solar panel installer every month. Many good candidates have come from the sluggish homebuilding industry.

First Solar Reaches Grid-Parity Milestone, Says Report

First Solar has made it to grid parity, according to at least one analyst.
A 12.6-megawatt system installed by First Solar (NSDQ: FSLR) for Sempra Generation showed that the system can produce electricity at below the price of conventional power in the United States, said Mark Bachman, an equity analyst at Pacific Crest, in a research note Tuesday.

Chevron completes solar power project at Milpitas schools

Chevron Energy Solutions said on Monday that it has completed a districtwide solar energy system for the Milpitas Unified School District that is expected to supply 75 percent of the district’s annual electricity needs.

California growers going solar

Abundant sunshine not only grows crops, but now it powers the operations, too
For more than 70 years, California's abundance of sunshine has enabled the Lundberg family to grow rice in the Central Valley north of Sacramento.
Now the sun is helping the family churn out myriad rice products, from chips to cakes to pasta.
Lundberg Family Farms, which bills itself as the nation's largest producer of organic rice and rice products, is among a small but growing number of California growers and processors turning to solar power to help them run their operations.

California plans 80 solar projects, but environmentalists raise concerns

The first solar thermal facility in California in nearly 20 years recently opened in Bakersfield, and is one of at least 80 solar power projects planned in the state. State officials say that they expect renewable energy to transform California's electricity system. However, critics warn that the plants could create environmental problems because of power towers and high-voltage wires.

SFPUC Approves 5-MW Solar Project

The San Francisco Public Utilities Commission (SFPUC) has approved a new contract with Recurrent Energy to generate 5 megawatts (MW) of solar power atop the recently seismically-retrofitted Sunset Reservoir. The project, which is expected to be completed and generating solar power for the City in 2010, will be California's largest solar photovoltaic system and the nation's largest municipal solar project.

Huaneng to build up China's largest solar PV demon project in Yunnan by 2010

Huaneng Group, parent company of Huaneng Power International, Inc. plans to build up a 166 MW on-grid solar photovoltaic (PV) power generating project in Shilin of Southwest China's Yunan Province by 2010, which will be the largest solar PV project in China.

by JD

385. ELECTRIC CAR UPDATE

It's amazing how quickly electric cars have gathered momentum. When I first got involved with peak oil in the summer of 2004, they weren't even on the radar screen. And when my blogging partner Roland wrote a couple of pieces on the subject for POD three years ago in 2005 (171. ELECTRIC CARS, PART 1 and 172. ELECTRIC CARS, PART 2), they were still an exotic niche topic. Now, three years later, the field is exploding, and there's a major scramble for position by carmakers all over the world, large and small. Indeed, it reminds me a lot of the early "wild west" days of the personal computer industry.

This is a key part of the shift away from oil, but I've found the coverage of it pretty spotty and inconsistent at sites like the Oil Drum. (Apparently, they're too busy posting Malthusian fruitcakery, like this piece by some university egghead demonstrating that agriculture itself is unsustainable. LOL.) So I've decided to produce some newsfeeds myself to balance the pessimistic slant at the Oil Drum and peakoil.com etc. These feeds will be a regular feature of POD, and will focus on different aspects of how people are actually SOLVING the peak oil problem. Today's topic: Electric cars. (Note: If you need a few laughs, compare the current news with Savinar's utterly bogus "proof" of why electric cars won't help, here.)

BYD to Introduce China's First Electric Car

A Chinese auto maker plans to unveil the country's first homegrown electric vehicle for the mass market, at least a year ahead of similar efforts around the world.

On Monday, BYD Co. plans to show reporters in Shenzhen the new F3DM, which runs off batteries that can be charged from a regular electrical outlet. BYD began marketing the F3DM this month to cab operators and other potential fleet customers, and plans to have it in showrooms by the end of this month, said Henry Li, a senior company executive. BYD plans to sell the car in the U.S. market as early as the second half of 2010.

(Note: BYD is partly owned by Warren Buffett.)

Ex-Chief Says Intel Should Power Cars

Former Intel Corp. chairman Andrew Grove is pushing the world's biggest maker of microprocessors to consider a new venture -- becoming a manufacturer of advanced batteries for plug-in electric cars.

Evonik, Daimler to make batteries for electric cars

German industrial conglomerate Evonik and carmaker Daimler have joined forces to develop and build advanced batteries for electric cars, the partners said on Monday.

SAIC to develop electric cars

Shanghai Automotive Industry Corporation (SAIC) Group and its subsidiary SAIC Motor plan to invest 2 billion yuan ($292 million) to develop electric-gasoline and electric cars. [...]

SAIC Group is China's largest automobile manufacturer in terms of sales.

Maui to test electric vehicles

Maui Electric will test electric vehicles through a new agreement with a California company.

Gov. Linda Lingle, Maui Electric Co. and Phoenix Motorcars announced Tuesday the plan to test all-electric vehicles and an electric vehicle infrastructure on Maui.

Japan taps Better Place for electric car charging

Japan's Ministry of the Environment announced a program on Tuesday to test electric vehicles and a network of charging stations, some supplied by auto start-up Better Place.

San Francisco plans to be electric car capital

San Francisco Bay Area cities promise to build the electric car capital of the United States, announcing a plan to put battery-powered automobiles on the road in 2012.

Electric car venture unveils charge stations in Israel

California-based electric car operator Better Place unveiled in Israel on Monday its first charging stations as part of a network it hopes will replace gasoline-powered engines worldwide.

Mini E Electric Car Arrives in NYC

The fanatical Mini groupies at MotoringFile have confirmed that the first Mini Es have arrived from Europe for distribution in the U.S.

REVA Electric Cars May Soon Be For Sale in Israel

BDO-I2I is looking to bring Indian-made electric cars onto the Israeli market. REVA Electric Car Company and consulting firm BDO-I2I are still finalizing the details, but there are reports imports could start before the end of January.

FedEx Delving Into the World of Electric Cars. Chooses UK-Based Modec for Initial Order of 10 Delivery Vans

Adding to its green fleet of more than 170 hybrid electric delivery vans worldwide, FedEx has decided to try out fully electric vehicles as well with a small group of 10 London-based test trucks.

Ford accelerates electric-vehicle plans

Ford Motor made electric vehicles a centerpiece of a turnaround plan presented to Congress on Tuesday, saying that it will introduce an all-electric van for fleet use in 2010 and a sedan in 2011.

Daimler plans serial production of electric cars: report

Daimler AG has decided to start the full serial production of several electric cars, weekly WirtschaftsWoche reports Sunday, citing people from within Daimler.
In an advance copy of a report from Monday's magazine, WirtschaftsWoche says that according to internal planning documents, the carmaker aims to deliver an electric version of the Smart to dealers in 2012, followed by electric versions of the Mercedes Benz A- and B-class models several months later.

Electric Cars for Military Bases in USA

Environmental Leader relays a Gannett’s Army Time article, which states that the US Army plans to order 400 electric vehicles from sources like Columbia ParCar Corp., Native American Biofuels International, and other manufacturers in 2009. Quantities are expected to rise to 4,000 in FY 2010, and may total 10,000 by the time the program ends.

Electric car maker seeks to fire up assembly line

Porteon seeks $15 million, bristles at the attention given to Asian automakers
After three years of quietly designing prototypes, Porteon Electric Vehicles Inc. wants to raise $15 million to begin production of a lineup of electric cars.

Michelin Develops Revolutionary Active Wheel for Electric Cars

Is this tire really the "Holy Grail of Eco-Transportation," as Treehugger believes? Maybe. Time will tell if the electric engine inside the Active Wheel from Michelin will catch on and further drive down the cost of electric vehicles.

Electric Car Conversions See Increase

Despite gas prices creeping down, a local man who converts cars from gasoline engines to electric motors says he's seen a spike in business.

Tesla Schooled By Tango In Electric Car Drag Race
[Highly recommended. The video is hilarious.]

In what may be the first ever drag race between production electric cars, the geeky Tango electric cruiser edged out the trendy Tesla Roadster electric sports car.

Companies in Europe plan electric car infrastructure

Automakers in Europe plan new business models for electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids before 2011.

The business models will eliminate the need for gasoline stations. Energy will be supplied by utility companies. The automakers also will need to take into account the life span of batteries, which will depreciate and wear out quicker than the cars themselves.

Toyota Motor Corp., Daimler, Renault-Nissan, Volvo, and General Motors are among the carmakers that plan to bring plug-in hybrids and full-electric cars to market in 2011.

When that happens, carmakers, utility companies, and battery suppliers will need to be ready to take over the role of energy suppliers from oil companies. This will require a restructuring of energy supply arrangements and infrastructure.

Enel, smart launch electric vehicle initiative in Italy

Italian utility Enel and smart, a Daimler Group brand, have launched the e-mobility Italy initiative aimed at spreading the use of electric vehicles supported by a specially tailored infrastructure providing intelligent and safe service.

Fuji Heavy Shows off Spacious Electric Vehicle

Fuji Heavy Industries Ltd exhibited "Plug-in Stella Concept," a new electric vehicle, at the G8 Hokkaido-Toyako Summit (See related article).

Fuji Heavy Industries brought five of the vehicles to the site of the summit and showcased them to government officials and journalists from all over the world. The company plans to commercialize an electric car in 2009.

Mitsubishi to start electric car production

While many car companies are still trying to perfect their electric cars, Mitsubishi Motors Corp has forged ahead with its i MiEV electric car that is set to enter production next year [2009].

Unveiled to the media yesterday ahead of this week’s International Petroleum Technology Conference, the i MiEV electric car does not look much different from the 660cc petrol-powered “i” car on which it was based.

The original “i” car’s engine and fuel tank have been replaced by an electric motor drive system and lithium-ion battery pack.

Mitsubishi Motors Malaysia Sdn Bhd chief executive officer Keizo Ono said the i MiEV was not a concept car but one ready for mass production.

The electric car will go on sale in Japan next year with launches planned in the US and Europe markets in 2010.

Chrysler's plan to beat the Chevy Volt

Chrysler is pinning a huge part of its future on a plan to produce a full line of electric vehicles, at a reasonable cost to both the carmaker and the consumer.

While General Motors is moving ahead with its Volt electric midsized car, Chrysler says it already has plans in place, not just for electric cars, but also for minivans and even off-road vehicles.

by JD

384. THE GROWING GLUT

A number of new analyses suggest a growing, long glut:

Oil analyst Philip Verleger claims that OPEC needs to reduce output by at least 7 million barrels a day to balance supply and demand:

Just how daunting is OPEC’s challenge to rein in falling oil prices? Beyond its control, if economist and oil-market analyst Philip Verleger is right.

Mr. Verleger, a former Carter administration official, academic, and energy-industry consultant, says OPEC can forget about tiny production cuts of 1 or 2 million barrels when it meets later this month in Algeria. The cartel needs to wipe out at least 7 million barrels per day of oil production to bring oil markets close to balance, he says, according to Platt’s The Barrel.

And that’s not likely to happen, which spells even more happy times for oil bears, Mr. Verleger says: “Since cuts of such magnitude are out of the question, one should expect prices to come under further downward pressure.”

His thesis? Global demand for oil has cratered much, much more than the spreadsheets used by groups like OPEC and the International Energy Agency. Mr. Verleger says global demand in December dropped to 81.6 million barrels a day, compared with 86.8 million barrels a year ago. That’s dramatically uglier than OPEC’s most recent diagnosis of oil demand, which put fourth-quarter global demand at 86.2 million barrels per day, up from 85.9 million a year ago.Source

Stocks are definitely rising. The oil market is currently in a "super contango", and crude is piling up not only in monitored storage like Cushing, OK, but in tankers parked at sea:

Royal Dutch Shell Plc sees so much potential in the strategy that it anchored a supertanker holding as much as $80 million of oil off the U.K. to take advantage of higher prices for future delivery. The ship is one of as many as 16 booked for potential storage instead of transporting crude, said Johnny Plumbe, chief executive officer of London shipbroker ACM Shipping Group Plc.

Oil Storage

The tankers, if full, hold about 26 million barrels worth about $1 billion, more than the 22.9 million barrels sitting in Cushing, Oklahoma, where oil is stored for delivery against Nymex contracts. U.S. crude inventories rose 11 percent this year to 320.4 million barrels, according to the Energy Department.

“All the market operators keep placing oil in storage,” said Francisco Blanch, head of global commodities research at Merrill Lynch & Co. in London. “Even though the contango is steep, it could get steeper.”Source

More broadly, a new report from the World Bank called Global Economic Prospects 2009(pdf) declares that "Like earlier commodity booms, this one has come to an end." and states:

The strength, breadth (in terms of the number of commodities whose prices have increased), and duration of the current commodity boom have prompted speculation that the global economy is moving into a new era characterized by relative shortage and permanently higher (and even permanently rising) commodity prices. This outcome does not appear likely. Over the next two decades, slower population growth and weaker (though still strong) income growth are projected to cause trend global GDP growth to ease (figure O.3) and, with it, the demand for commodities.

According to Andrew Burns, Lead Author of the report:

Over the longer term, the supply shortages that contributed to the sharp rise in commodity prices are expected to ease. Demand for energy, metals, and food should slow due to weaker population growth and an expected reversal in China’s high demand for metals as investment rates there decline.Source

Now that things have settled down, the commodities price spike/collapse of 2008 is looking more and more like a mundane rerun of the commodities price spike/collapse of the late 70s. Except this time we had a whole army of chicken littles, pumped up by the steroid of the internet, to loudly worry and moralize about it 24 hours a day. Six months ago, we were all going to die because we were running out of everything. Now the same stuff is piling up in overflowing tankers, silos and warehouses.

Peak everything. Honestly, how butt stupid did you have to be to buy into that? How likely is it that mankind was running dry of every single natural resource, at exactly the same time? Not too likely, as we've seen. The only thing that was really peaking was financial overextension and hype.

-- by JD

383. THE FALLING COST OF PRODUCING OIL

Peak oilers are a restless bunch, working round the clock to turn anything and everything into another reason why we're doomed. You'd think that a massive $100 dive in the price of oil, and an ever-growing glut of the substance, would shut them up for five minutes, but no such luck. First we were doomed because of high oil prices. Now it turns out we're doomed because of low oil prices. Yup, the latest doomer talking point is that the plummeting price of oil will make it uneconomical to produce the "expensive" oil, so we're in big trouble.

This view has a couple of problems. First of all, if the price is dropping, that means there's no demand for the expensive oil. Ergo, it's no big deal if we don't produce it. In fact, it's better all around if we don't produce it because that will: (a) save more oil for later, and (b) reduce pollution and CO2 emissions.

Second, and more important, is the erroneous assumption that "expensive" oil is somehow inherently expensive, and that high costs will stay high as the price of oil drops.

In fact, high oil production costs have been driven primarily not by geology or EROEI, but by the same bubble dynamics that made the price of everything go up. Numerous projects were cancelled in the last year or two because the industry was overheating. Rigs, steel, white collar expertise, manual labor, materials, shipping -- everything was too expensive, and project budgets were ballooning out of control. Now that the bubble has popped, construction costs will come back down to earth. The smart players will do their project construction now, at bargain basement prices, and reap the benefits in the next cycle of high oil prices. That's the secret to riding the oil wave: build when costs are low, and pump when prices are high.

The peak oilers are fretting as if oil prices going down the toilet is some kind of new phenomenon. They still haven't caught on: oil is a cyclical business. Always has been for the last 150 years. As previously noted, the grizzled veterans have seen it all before:

"We're a cyclical business," David J. O'Reilly, chief executive of ChevronTexaco, the second-largest American oil company, said in a telephone interview, "and at the high end of the cycle it makes sense to get the company in good shape and strengthen our balance sheet. "History tells us that what goes up also goes down."Source

Consider the oil sands. In 2006, the average cost of producing a barrel of oil in Alberta was 32USD. Here's the breakdown (click to enlarge):


Up through the summer of 2008, costs in Alberta skyrocketed due to the fever of speculative bubblenomics:

"Labour shortages and increased material costs have created a hyper-inflationary environment within the oil and gas industry in Alberta. With the sheer number of oilsands projects, together with the future Arctic pipelines and conventional oil and gas developments in Alberta, labour demands in Canada will be pushed to their limits," he said.Source

The "high costs" we keep hearing about were actually driven by hyper-inflationary conditions, and are now coming down. Contrary to the naive view, production costs are not fixed. In Alberta, the primary drivers of high costs are steel and labor:

Five years ago [i.e. 2003], the capital cost of building a project that mined bitumen and processed it into high-quality crude was around C$40,000 per barrel of production, reckons Andrew Potter, a UBS Securities analyst. The same project today could cost C$180,000 per barrel, or around C$18 billion for a typical 100,000 barrel-a-day development.
Soaring raw material prices, notably for steel, have played a big role. Oil sands will likely find some relief here: Steel prices have slumped three-quarters from summer highs as major consumers - China in particular - rein back demand amid fears of a global economic slowdown. But the main culprit is labor.Source

Steel is already down the toilet, and wages aren't set in concrete, particularly in a time of deflation and surging unemployment. The only reasonable conclusion is that the cost of producing in the oil sands is (or will soon be) rapidly dropping, together with the price of oil.

And that's when the smart firms kick into gear:

The collective impact of project delays may work out rather well for companies that still decide to push ahead.

Through its affiliate Imperial Oil Ltd. (IMO), ExxonMobil is still sticking to schedule for the C$8 billion Kearl oil sands mine.

"[While] some of the other oil sands projects may be slowing down or whatever, that could actually provide some benefit to us in respect to lower cost, both for raw material and services," David Rosenthal, ExxonMobil's vice president of investor relations, said on a conference call Thursday.Source

And (hat tip to OilFinder):

6. Is there a benefit for Hyperdynamics to have a lower oil price?

My Answer:

Yes. I don't think the price will drop to lower levels than we have seen in years past and so I will take it either way at the moment. Actually, I would prefer the price of oil to stay lower until we make a discovery, and then I would like it to go up for the benefit of Guinea and our shareholders. I know this is a capitalistic statement and I apologize to any Socialist reading this. The lower the price of oil, the easier it is to secure some of the critical resources necessary to do the exploration work, such as drilling rigs. Moreover, we can secure the resources at lower costs. Obviously, if the price of oil is $147 per barrel, drilling rigs are receiving a premium and are working continuously. A lower price of oil could actually allow us and our partners to obtain a rig sooner and at more reasonable cost. This is especially true for us due to the economics of our prospects. The potential volumes in our prospects can make up for much of a lagging price of oil.Source

It reminds may of a famous saying by Konosuke Matsushita (founder and former President of Panasonic):

好況よし、不況さらによし

Good times are good. Bad times are even better.

by JD

382. MASSIVE RAILWAY BUILD IN CHINA

It's nice to read about a country which doesn't spend all of its national energy saving financial players, and endlessly griping in the blogosphere. Confronted with the current economic problems, the Chinese roll up their sleeves and get to work. The figures in this very interesting article will blow your mind:

China has long had plans for laying 120,000 km worth of railways by 2020, but as the global economic slowdown begins to bite, it looks as though the money will be spent faster than planned to help speed flagging economic growth in China.

In September and October, the Ministry of Railways announced eight new railway projects in various parts of the country. Their investment has added up to 405 billion yuan, equaling 78 percent of the total investment that China poured into railway construction from 2003 to 2007.

In the past five years, the total investment for the railway infrastructure was 522 billion yuan, Minister Liu Zhijun told a working conference in January.

The start-up of the eight railway projects in a short period of time is the beginning of a railway construction boom.

The ministry's planning department chief Yang Zhongmin says about 3.5 trillion yuan will be invested on railway projects in next three years.

At present, 150 railway projects are under construction, involving an investment of 1.6 trillion yuan, he says.

Converting the figures (at 6.8 yuan to the dollar) we get: $60 billion in new rail projects announced in Sept/Oct, $77 billion spent on rail in the last 5 years, $515 billion to be invested in the next three years, and 150 rail projects under construction worth $235 billion.

Damn! That's my kind of bailout. It makes you wonder why the US can't do something like that. Assuming that they wanted to, are the Americans even capable of rolling out a large rail project? I'm thinking: probably not.

It's clear that China is paying attention, and making the moves they need to make to thrive in the 21st century. Meanwhile, the US is blogging up a storm on all the doom sites. It seems that much of the angst about TEOTWAWKI (The End Of The World As We Know It), is really more about TEOAAWKI (The End Of America As We Know It).

by JD

381. EXPORT LAND MODEL: DUE DILIGENCE AUDIT (PT. 1)

The Export Land Model (ELM) is a concept widely promoted by Jeffrey Brown of the Oil Drum. It describes how rising consumption by oil producing nations, combined with peak production in those nations, accelerates the decline in net exports. I won't rehash the basics here, so if you need to get up to speed, please see Brown's article here or Wikipedia etc.

To begin, let me be clear that the ELM is a genuine effect which merits serious attention. On the other hand, Mr. Brown has a well-documented history of bluster and exaggeration, so this post will be the first in a series of posts which audit the ELM. The purpose will be to separate the facts from the hype.

First, let's look at the standard chart which Brown uses to illustrate the effects of the export land model:

Fig. 1: The illustrative model

For greater clarity, let's also look at the table of figures this graph is derived from (click to enlarge):

Table 1: Table for the graph in Fig. 1

Now let's make a couple of observations:

1. The danger of the ELM is that it accelerates the decline in net exports. How large is that accelerating effect? Not that large. In the illustrative case shown in Fig. 1 and Table 1, the ELM causes net exports to drop to zero in 9 years. If we eliminate the ELM by stabilizing consumption at 1mbd, net exports drop to zero in 13 years. The accelerating effect of consumption is quite moderate.

2. In his remarks on the model in Fig. 1, Brown writes: "the net export decline rate in a given year accelerates with time, from an initial year over year change in net exports of -12.5% to a final year over year change in net exports of -47.6% (last year of net exports)"Source. This is technically true (despite the error in Brown's math). However, it is extremely misleading and an abuse of statistics. Yes, the year-on-year decline rate rapidly increases, as shown by the far right column of Table 1, which indicates the year-on-year % decline in the "Net Exports" column. Note, however, the column labeled "Decrement" in Table 1. This shows the actual amount of exports lost in each year due to the ELM effect. As you can see, the lost amounts actually *decrease* in size as the years go by. Far from being a decline at an "accelerating rate", the decline is actually less steep than an ordinary linear decline (where a fixed amount is lost each year).

Brown is basically making a mountain out of a molehill. Any linear decline can be painted as an "accelerating decline rate" using Brown's gimmick. Suppose, for example, you have a gas tank filled with 10 gallons, and you use one gallon per hour. Then the hour-on-hour decline rates are: 1/10, 1/9, 1/8, 1/7, 1/6, 1/5, 1/4, 1/3, 1/2, 1 (= 10%, 11%, 13%,14%, 17%, 20%, 25%, 33%, 50%, 100%). Voila: an ordinary linear decline can now be fraudulently painted as "decline at an accelerating decline rate".

Brown uses this statistical chicanery to produce the following diagram:

Fig. 2: The horror of "accelerating decline rates"

As noted above, the same sort of diagram can be produced for an ordinary fuel tank running down at the mundane linear rate of 1 gallon/hour. In the last two hours the decline rates are a horrifying 50% and 100%, respectively, and the "exponential decline rate" for the entire 9 hour draw-down is a hair-raising 22% per hour!

The bottom line is that all this talk/graphing of "accelerating decline rates" is misleading nonsense. As I've shown, the ELM results in a net export decline which is sub-linear (i.e. less steep than a linear decline).

3. Now, look again at Fig. 2. In the accompanying article, Brown points to this graph as evidence that things are even more dire in the real world because the "accelerating decline rate" of export land UK is far worse than the illustrative ELM in Fig. 1. There's one problem, though. The UK is not an example of the Export Land Model. Here's the ELM figures (in kbd) from the BP Stat. Rev. 2008 for all years subsequent to the UK's production peak in 1999:

As you can see, UK consumption was essentially flat during the period. This is also clear in the graph:

Brown himself acknowledges this in Fig. 2 where he gives a consumption increase rate for the UK of +0.2%/year!! Clearly the UK does not follow the ELM, and it's rapid decline to zero exports over 6 years was not due to the ELM. So why did Brown choose the UK to illustrate the horrors of the ELM? Personally, I would call it a lack of integrity. Brown is always looking to goose the doom level with scary advocacy numbers, so he cherry picked the UK as an example -- undoubtedly because it's a country with an alarming decline rate, and he hoped to fraudulently associate that rate with the ELM model.

4. Brown's theory was heartily adopted by the oil bulls (encouraged by a generous helping of the usual exponential bluster from Brown himself, i.e.: "From this point out I think we'll see a geometric progression in prices… you know, $50, $100, $200, $400, whatever. The only question now is how short the periods will be between prices doubling again”. -- Jeffrey Brown, June 5, 2008 Source). This, predictably, resulted in further cascades of bogus ELM hype:

Underscoring Brown's concerns;

* On April 15, 2008 the Russians, the world's second largest oil exporter announced that their oil production appears to have peaked, with production in the first quarter of this year declining for the first time in a decade. If they have indeed peaked then, based on the ELM, the world could lose Russia’s current ~7 million barrels a day in exports within 6 to 9 years.Source

Compare this with the facts. According to the BP Stat. Rev. 2008, oil production in Russia in 2007 was 9978kbd, and consumption was 2699kbd. Consumption growth in Russia was -0.9% in 2007 (over 2006), and has been very sluggish for the last 10 years, as you can see from this Table:

Even assuming that Russian production declines at a rate of 5% per year (which is highly unlikely considering the country's size and diversity, see 317. STRONG ARGUMENT FOR A SLOW DECLINE and Hubbert Theory Says Peak Oil is a Slow Squeeze), consumption would need to rise at 10-18% per year for exports to decline to zero in 6-9 years, which is completely preposterous given Russia's recent consumption growth.

Using more realistic figures for Russian production decline (-3% per year) and consumption increase (+1%, which is probably on the high side given Russia's rapidly declining population), Russian consumption doesn't exceed production until the year 2039.

As you can see from the above, a clear of understanding of the Export Land effect is going to involve a comprehensive analysis of the complete export situation worldwide -- not gimmicky analysis of cherry-picked examples. I will describe my results on that front in Part 2.

(Part 2: 409. THE IMPORT LAND MODEL)

by JD