Fuel for your tractor

I frequent this forum as it gives me an idea as to what to expect at the pump and what to expect in the future. In this series of articles...the ones running down the center of the page, I find that last one very interesting...basically the place fossil fuel will play in the future and why this won't change.....too much:

https://oilprice.com/Energy/Crude-Oil/Could-An-Energy-Crunch-Lead-To-A-Worldwide-Financial-Crisis.html

Another thing now is the electric vehicle craze. We currently have rolling black outs at peak demand times, and weather related problems like we had in Texas this past winter. Take the millions of vehicles on our roads today, driving X miles per year, consuming Y gallons of fuel. Converting the MPG to Gallons to BTUs to kWatts of electricity and you have to ask yourself......daaaaaaa where are those kW coming from? Power capacity doesn't get specified, designed, built, and on line in a heartbeat.......nor does delivery capacity....like Joe's Garage on Route 66 out in NM or AZ which you are approaching in your evehicle, running low on kW and needing to stop for a fillup......just things that haven't thoroughly been thought out in all the hype.

We just drove to AZ from MN, and across NE and OK there are hundreds of windmills, and they are putting up more every day, along with large solar farms. I think there will be plenty of power, not necessarily at all times, but as battery technology improves it will be. In AZ many parking lots are covered with solar panels, so your car is protected from the sun, and you could charge it with clean power, it's a win-win!

If you want to know the future price of gas google RBOB gasoline. RBOB,
Reformulated Blendstock for Oxygenate Blending

RBOB gasoline futures contract is listed on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) under the futures symbol RB.1 Although it does not receive as much general investor interest as crude oil futures, the contract serves as an essential vehicle for market participants seeking to speculate and hedge in the gasoline market.

RBOB Gasoline (RB:NMX)
$2.2033
+0.0464 (+2.15%)
DATA AS OF NOV 22, 2021 5:15 PM ET

The price of fuels is based on crude.
Watch crude price on CL:NMX

Crude Oil (CL:NMX)
$76.75
+0.65 (+0.85%)
DATA AS OF NOV 22, 2021 5:15 PM ET

Many factors influence crude. OPEC is the biggest one.
The recently OPEC cut production 5 Million barrels to keep crude price up.

Solar and wind generation is great for about 1/3 of our needs.

Beyond that and it doesnt work. Sun doesnt always shine, wind doesnt always blow. We need the old reliable coal, hydro, nuke to provide the 2/3. Natural gas could be a part of it (is a big part now) but if we are supposed to shut down all petro drilling and shut down all pipelines then it cant be any more.

Fruther to get to 1/3, we need many more power transmission lines crisis crossing the country, at substantial cost. If we did this, it will take time. Decades. Not the 12 years or less some fools propose.

Clearing the ground for windmills, solar especially, and power lines will take a lot of land out of food production. This is a concern that must be addressed. Placing the panels on city roofs would be a good start, but there doesnt seem to be enough effort in that, and maybe not enough roofs. I dont think people understand the scope of acres needed to accomplish replacing 1/3 of our energy production.

Solar panel and battery technologies have advanced a lot in the past 50 years. We are down to the small half a percent advances any more. Someone would need to stumble upon a real game changing breakthrough out of left field to really make a difference any more on batteries and panels.

Mining the exotic rate materials used for panels and the better batteries is neither clean nor efficient, so the actual real gains over present energy is pretty negligible. Seems the goal of change is more important than seeing an actual improvement.

Interesting times.

Paul

We may be able to generate the KWs. Has any one researched where a large amount of the materials to build batteries comes from?

If there isn't Plenty of Power at ALL Times then there isn't Plenty of power.Surely not enough power to charge millions off new EV.

China own the rights to most of the minerals needed.What could go wrong?

Back in the 70s energy crisis I studied homeowner simple solar and alternative energy. It was quite a wave of popularity back then. The Runnings Fleet and Farm stores even stocked stills to make fuel for the tractors from your corn, I remember looking at it on the shelf.

Was interesting times.

None of this is new.

Civilizations use the best resources while they can. When they cant they move on to the next.

Not that many decades ago whale blubber was traded as a fuel source, energy source.

It ran its course and we moved on.

I guess history 100 years from now will have to decide if we are on an intelligent course at the present time with all this.

I love studying the alternatives and using them where they fit. Dropping proven energy supplies without a good handle on what will replace them, without the infrastructure there, seems odd. See what history says in a few decades I guess.

Paul

The largest mining company in the world is BHP on the stock exchange.
Second largest is RIO.
Google them. They are on the NYSE. They mine in many countries.
BHP has been in business for almost 150 years.
Both BHP.and RIO is working on permits to mine copper in Arizona.
If there's anything to be mined, they mine it.
Google the companies.

I read about 4 paras of that opinion piece and realized the author doesn't know squadoodle about the oil field upstream and mid-stream market.

I don't know who he is, or what job he has, but his scenario is wildly improbable. We have known reserves of 200MBBLs in west TX and east NM. There are literally 10,000 pump rigs sitting idle in the west TX/NM oil field right now. If we go up to Williston, the Bakken field is est at over 7 BILLION barrels of oil, not counting nat gas and other light aeromatics.

Now, lets talk coal. The US has the largest discovered coal reserves on the planet. Of course, there could be other massive coal fields that are not yet discovered, but right now - we are awash in coal. We send over 300 metric tons of coal to China every month, and that is growing all the time.

Energy is an intl commodity. When the price rises enough, there is plenty of oil, gas, and coal to go around. Any talk of an economic crash is just a bunch of eyewash, or clueless speculation. Remember gas lines in the 70s? I do. Turns out, there was plenty of gas/oil. All we had to do was pay for it. My plan is to run the ME dry first. We want to drain them of all the oil they will pump, and turn it into a oil-less, waterless void. Once that's done, the world will look to Canada, US, Russia, and S Africa for carbo-hydrate based energy.

Solar, wind, hydroelectric is a short player. It will NEVER take up more than a casual percent of the US or global market. ALL of the solar, wind, and hydro plants and sources are heavily govt subsidized. If we want a socialized energy market, be careful what you wish for. The govt hand on the power switch may not be as benevolent as the hand of profit on the gas pump.

i second that

no way to be carbon energy free. not without eliminating alot of the population and no one driving anything anywhere. I'm sure the rest of the world will just right on that band wagon...not. i understand china is building 21 new COAL fired power plants.

My thoughts exactly, what could go wrong?

(quoted from post at 11:09:01 11/23/21) We just drove to AZ from MN, and across NE and OK there are hundreds of windmills, and they are putting up more every day, along with large solar farms. I think there will be plenty of power, not necessarily at all times, but as battery technology improves it will be. In AZ many parking lots are covered with solar panels, so your car is protected from the sun, and you could charge it with clean power, it's a win-win!

Click to expand...

I don't believe you are seeing the bigger picture. The only reason that stuff is being erected is because of govt subsidies. Nuclear is the answer, along with hydro as far as non-fossil fuels. Homeowner solar/wind/alternatives is a better solution than industrial scale solar and wind in the long run.

And building all those systems takes a lot of energy which probably represents a net loss
until the system has been operating for many years. Our local coal burner lasted 60 years.
A quick estimate is that if present car fuel is 10% ethanol, (Which is produced by burning natural gas and growing corn), we could expect maybe 10% of the present fuel use once petroleum and coal are eliminated. The question becomes who gets it? Keep raising the fuel tax to lower demand. Continue to let food producers deduct the tax, (But not for non-food corn sold to the distillers.). Depend more on railroads and busses. The personal car will become the equivalent of an electric golf cart, and we'll be glad to have one.

(quoted from post at 10:09:01 11/23/21) We just drove to AZ from MN, and across NE and OK there are hundreds of windmills, and they are putting up more every day, along with large solar farms. I think there will be plenty of power, not necessarily at all times, but as battery technology improves it will be. In AZ many parking lots are covered with solar panels, so your car is protected from the sun, and you could charge it with clean power, it's a win-win!

Click to expand...

N to Az sure would be a long trip in this solar PU!
Cybertruck
and a solar roof designed to deliver as much as 25 to 35 miles of range per day, provided you live somewhere sunny. It's not just the roof of the cabin that's designed to soak up the sun, as you'll note the truck features a telescoping solar louver system that can extend all the way to the tailgate.

That's a good idea. I don't have the numbers in front of me but I'd think it would take a lot of panels just to gas up one car! How do SPs stand up to golfball hail storms?

Based purely on my speculation, many decades ago, in answering your question at the time, I had knowledge of Texas sitting on
lots of oil, why were we importing oil....for the very reason you mentioned....keep ours and burn theirs. I thought it made sense.

During the 70's crunch, wife and I took a vacation from Dallas to Jamaica....over the Gulf of Mexico. You wouldn't believe the number
of oil tankers the plane passed over that were just sitting out in the gulf doing nothing. Some had a couple of tankers moored side by
side....I guess for a little companionship. Had to be a boring job being a sailor on one of those.

My roof is half an inch thick 3 ply plywood and 40+ years old. Shingles are maybe 3/8 thick not made as a load bearing surface.
Punching holes in shingles makes for leak potentials. I don't know the resistance to hail damage. I don't know the life span of the
overall SP system, even though the element is million hour microchip technology. I don't want that stuff on my roof!