I will believe the Saudis don't see any upcoming problems with Ghawar when they cancel one of their projects due to low oil prices. If they continue to be full steam ahead with increasing their capacity then I think they are aware that Ghawar may not be as robust in 5 years time as they would like us to believe.
Posted: Tue Jun 28, 2005 9:18 pm Post subject: Synthetic oil
Coal liquefaction is going to play a big role on the downslope, so let's note a few things about it:
1) The sound bite that "oil is a feedstock with no substitutes" is a myth. All petrochemicals can be made from liquefied coal, and coal gas (syn gas). There is no significant difference in chemistry between natural crude oil and synthetic crude produced from coal (except that synthetic crude is cleaner). Detergents, pesticides, fertilizer, plastics, synthetic fibers and synthetic rubber can all be made from coal. Also, coal can be profitably liquefied in the U.S. today, provided that the price of crude oil stays above $35/bbl.
2) Clearly, these new synthetic liquids are going to be called "oil". They are chemically identical to oil products, and they do the same jobs as oil products. They will also be mixed together with oil products in the refining step. It's reallly pointless to separate the two.
This means that coal reserves are in fact oil reserves. Total recoverable coal reserves in the U.S. are estimated at about 250 billion short tons. At 20,754,000 btus/short ton, the U.S. has 5.2 x 10^18 btus of recoverable coal reserves. The thermal efficiency of coal liquefaction is about 65%. So if we liquefy the coal reserves of the U.S., we get 3.4 x 10^18 btus of synthetic oil. There are about 5.8 x 10^6 btus in a barrel of oil, so total reserves of oil located in coal reserves in the U.S. is roughly 5.9 x 10^11 barrels = 590 giga barrels. That's about 80 years of oil at current U.S. consumption rates of 20 mbd.
The point is not that all of that coal will be liquefied. However, a substantial portion of it will be, and that portion needs to be reclassified as "new oil".
1. What are the state and value of US coal reserves?
Total proven world reserves of coal are estimated to total almost one trillion tons and are projected to last over 200 years at current rates of consumption. The US has about 250 billion tons of recoverable coal reserves. According to the EIA figures, we can see that we have 255 years of coal remaining in the year 2000 given our current rate of consumption. That prediction assumes equal use of all grades of coal, from anthracite to lignite. Population growth alone reduces the calculated lifetime to some 90-120 years. However, if we look back in history, we see that there were 300 years of coal reserves in 1988, 1000 years reserves in 1904, and 10,000 years reserves in 1868! As each year goes by, our coal consumption increases and we see that the projection becomes meaningless. And if we suddenly move to a bigger reliance on coal, and coal liquidfaction for gas, then this estimate would surely drop dramatically.
Coal peak projections:
Hubbert Model Peak 2032
EIA, Annual Energy Outlook 2004 Peak 2060
Flat gas consumption and greater coal consumption Peak 2053
Flat gas consumption and synfuels from coal to replace oil Peak 2035
2. What are the possibilities of turning a petroeconomy to a coal economy?
Large scale applications of the Fischer-Tropsch process (coal to petro) have existed in only a few countries like Germany during WWII, and South Africa since the 1960s. The process is 2:1, coal to motor fuel, approximately. Hydrogen production would require an even greater consumption of coal. From what I have read on the subject so far, coal liquefaction would seem to be regarded as a medium to long term prospect for any significant energy production. The lead time to ramp up for any significant production is years, if not decades away. Liquid Coal http://www.peakoil.com/fortopic280.html
3. Can this extend the energy Peak? If so how long?
How long? And to what end? Long enough to make the consequences of peak oil even more dire? There is no techno-fix or energy fix to the peak oil problem. It is one of world view, and exponential growth in a finite world. The above peak projections show that coal will not give us much more time.
4. What are the economic ramifications?
Not sure. To date, where coal liquefaction technology has developed, pure economics have been a secondary consideration. Hitler used it to wage war and South Africa used it to offset the consequences of apartheid.
5. What are the Political ramifications?
Not sure here either. Increased use of coal would contribute to global warming on an unknown scale. The ravage of the environment to strip the coal would increase especially given the mindset of the current administration.
New coal plants bury 'Kyoto'
Quote:
The official treaty to curb greenhouse-gas emissions hasn't gone into effect yet and already three countries are planning to build nearly 850 new coal-fired plants, which would pump up to five times as much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere as the Kyoto Protocol aims to reduce.
Joined: May 02, 2005 Posts: 3524 Location: Oh really?
Posted: Tue Jun 28, 2005 10:48 pm Post subject:
There is no question, that when faced with desperate energy needs, all environemental considerations will be brushed aside.
We will make coal oil, a lot of it, more than the planet can tolerate. The peak oil environmentalists know this, consciously or subconsciously. If you want to know who they are, look at the doomers who seem eager for depression and/or dieoff. Most of them aren't nut cases (although they are made to feel they are). They just want to save the planet. _________________ "It's still all about energy!"
Joined: May 20, 2004 Posts: 235 Location: Sonoma County, Northern California
Posted: Tue Jun 28, 2005 10:54 pm Post subject: Craig Hatfield, Ph.D. on Coal Liquifaction:
Hi John - I enjoy your cornucopian enthusiasm - it's always a challenge to try to evaluate your frequent challenges to the doomers. Here's the best I can do with a minimal period to research for coal liquifaction - even Heinberg's first book only gives it cursory coverage. This quote is from Dr. Hatfield's seminal paper on peak oil probabilities from 1997. I agree that it can be a viable component of future liquid fuel supply, but I'm not sure that it can be significant enough to bail us out.
Quote:
Because the United States has larger coal reserves than any other country, coal liquefaction has been suggested as a source of synthetic oil. As is true in the cases of oil shale and tar sands, quantitative consideration of the total probable contribution of coal liquefaction to our fluid fuel supply tends to temper enthusiasm.
If we assume that a ton of coal will yield 5.5 barrels of liquid fuel (11), and that the United States could mine coal for liquefaction at a rate sufficient to replace 2.6 billion barrels of oil per year (which is only 10% of global oil consumption for 1996), then we would liquefy annually an amount of coal approximately half as great as the total amount mined annually in the United States during the 1990s. This would require a roughly 50% increase in rate of United States coal mining. If we ignore the environmental concerns associated with such great expansion of coal mining and consider only the liquefaction facilities required, the cost would be many tens of billions of dollars. Such facilities would have to liquefy several dozens of times more coal annually than do the current South African coal liquefaction plants.
Is the United States or any other country capable of adhering to a commitment to such gigantic long-term investment regardless of short-term fluctuations in the price of oil? During the 1980s, when the price of oil was declining, synthetic fuels projects were abandoned as rapidly as they had been initiated during the 1970s. Development of substitutes for even a small fraction of our conventional petroleum consumption is a gigantic undertaking that is guaranteed to fail if it can be abandoned in response to short-term changes in the price of oil.
Even if society commits itself to the staggering capital investment necessary for oil from coal to replace the coming decline in conventional oil production, such an approach would rapidly deplete coal reserves and thus would be only a very temporary solution to the problem. If we ignore recent downward revisions in coal reserve estimates and fancifully assume that the United States has a 300-year-supply of producible coal at current coal consumption rate, then a mere 4% per year growth in consumption rate will reduce the 300-year-reserve to a 64-year-supply (with the unrealistic assumption that coal production rate could continue to grow until depletion of the resource).
The hubbert.mines.edu website where the above link is located, hasn't been updated since 2001, and Hatfield, who was an emeritus professor of geology at the University of Toledo, seems to have disappeared after his 1997 paper, which is referred to many, many times in peak oil lore on the web.
Joined: Jun 12, 2005 Posts: 4189 Location: 1st territorial capitol of AZ
Posted: Wed Jun 29, 2005 1:56 am Post subject:
Making oil from coal is negative-return, dirty as hell, and has only been used in emergency circumstances, like the Germans in WWII when they had nothing else and were fighting the defensive end game. It won't work and for the Earth that's a good thing!
Posted: Wed Jun 29, 2005 3:51 am Post subject: Re: Synthetic oil
JohnDenver wrote:
2) Clearly, these new synthetic liquids are going to be called "oil". They are chemically identical to oil products, and they do the same jobs as oil products. They will also be mixed together with oil products in the refining step. It's reallly pointless to separate the two.
I suppose you do have a point there, but then you can't seperate coal and oil consumption anymore either don't forget, and you then also need to factor in the significant energy loss from the liquification process itself as well, further constraining supplies.
Also, coal production is significantly lower then oil production, and does not have as extensive a world production and distrobution system as oil does (it is extensive of course, it just couldn't make up for oil's without lots of energy input to expand it). Sure it could be turned into oil first, then distributed through that system, but you need to get all that coal to liquification plants before that, and the current oil distribution would have to adapt to new sources in new locations on the globe. After all, major oil centers are rarely major coal centers, so either you need to move the coal, or move the distrobution network.
Will it be done? Probably, but its hard to imagine that it will make all that much difference.
That concept needs to be stamped out of the collective vocabulary here.
Just about EVERY energy process results in less energy than the primary source contained. Who the phuck cares !!! We do it all the time.
The obvious tradeoff is a barrel of liquid fuel instead of coal.
Joined: May 02, 2005 Posts: 3524 Location: Oh really?
Posted: Wed Jun 29, 2005 10:27 am Post subject:
DriveElectric wrote:
I_Like_Plants wrote:
Making oil from coal is negative-return,
That concept needs to be stamped out of the collective vocabulary here.
Just about EVERY energy process results in less energy than the primary source contained. Who the phuck cares !!! We do it all the time.
The obvious tradeoff is a barrel of liquid fuel instead of coal.
If you find and energy transfer process that has a positive return, run to your nearest patent office with your submission so it can be placed along side all the other perpetual motion machines that don't work. _________________ "It's still all about energy!"
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