Current Gasoline/Petrol Price$

SpaceNut · 2022-11-11 19:23:02

Making fuel is not free from Nuclear even if it's got the power as that power plant still needs to be near the resources in order to keep transport costs low and to have that water for cooling.

Water is plentiful from the ocean, but it comes with a cost to supply to the process.

Energy to make a synthetic oil that would be the starting point of distillation means more energy was used to start the process. It would be better to make the desired product and skip the starting point that oil begins with.

Maybe we can make use of coal as a starting point to supplement ocean co2 but can we do something else with it as well? I believe that coal and steam is used to make synthetic propane or methane but that is not what we are using to fuel our trucking industry or the cars we drive to work each day.

The coal-to-gasoline & coal-to-nitrogenous fertilizer processes

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_gasification

https://www.netl.doe.gov/sites/default/ … boneng.pdf

Paper products is gone from the US due to cheaper sources for them. Even the logging industry send more logs out rather than creating product state side.

I saw an article about putting solar panels on top of ash sites, basically land not useable for anything else much like the push to use dump sites that are capped.

kbd512 · 2022-11-11 20:12:59

tahanson43206,

"It's sensible to ignore good ideas because they require human cooperation, and sometimes people don't cooperate with each other."

That's quite a statement, TA. I'm not sure what to make of that, but I know I don't want that printed on my epitaph.

Earth can never become "like Venus", at least not until the Sun becomes a Red Giant hundreds of millions to billions of years from now, unless there's enough CO2 trapped within the bowels of the Earth to increase the sea level atmospheric pressure to something equivalent to AT LEAST 2,475 feet of seawater. So far as I'm aware, there is no record of CO2 levels EVER being that high, which means such a circumstance happening on Earth could only be the result of a cataclysmic collision between this planet and another gigantic asteroid from outer space.

The mere fact that you think that's even a remote possibility, from burning some more coal and oil, is quite remarkable, to me at least. If energy systems were controlled by positive feedback loops, then a thermal runaway would've already happened. If you can't understand why, then start teaching yourself about why that hasn't happened. Even if I told you why, you'd refuse to believe it. Replacing apocalyptic dystopian beliefs with knowledge seems to be the fruit of the poison tree to my religious people. Worse still, as I'm all too painfully aware, most people would rather die than change.

There was a time when Earth had well over 1,000ppm CO2. There was no thermal runaway. The Earth did not become a giant desert. It was very different than it is today, but then again, it always is. According to the scientists who study Earth's biosphere, that was also when Earth had its greatest level of biodiversity. Then the Earth became a snowball in cycles, cO2 levels dropped, and most life froze to death.

Trees only collect carbon from the atmosphere while they're growing, which is why humans planting saplings, cutting them down after they grow large enough, and then planting more saplings, is a net benefit (for dealing with the CO2 boogeyman). They hid that knowledge within books, which, oddly enough, are also made from paper. While the trees remain young and growing, they consume a lot more CO2 in order to grow. We could make paper from hemp, which grows very fast. Disposable plastic containers could be replaced with hemp and some sort of natural wax. It's no longer easily recyclable at that point, as SpaceNut has pointed out, but then you could turn it into fuel. Paper made from coal, though? I'm not too sure about that one.

Senator Manchin is neither villain nor hero. He's just a man who has noted that his people, who he is responsible for, need energy to live and thrive, which coal can provide. Unfortunately for him, so many other people from his own political / religious party are so lost in their climate change religion that they spend more time worshiping their idols or casting spells against their arch-nemesis (CO2), than they do taking a look around to see what the results of their religious practices have been and would be.

SpaceNut · 2022-11-12 12:45:15

Religion is a book with faith-based answers which goes against science and always has but I digress.

Fast growing crops such as Bamboo would seem to be a win for use sounds like that should be a biosphere 2 activity.

They only issue for Senator Manchin is that he needs to remember that he is part of the whole and not just a little piece when it comes to the US. If I remember there were some deals put into the mix of legislation that did get passed at the lower dollar value but I would need to find out what the trade was.

So far, we know what the cost of oil is per barrel, transportation is a distance dependent function of import or exported production, the equipment for distillation plus maintenance, and finally deliver of product transport for its ultimate cost to the customer for the business model of what we need for energy and how much the people can afford.

kbd512 · 2022-11-12 16:20:19

SpaceNut,

Religion was / is ritual. Rituals existed long before books. If you took all the books away, the rituals would still be there.

The idea that photovoltaics, electro-chemical batteries, and wind turbines could ever replace fossil fuels is faith-based answers which goes against science and always has, but there is no digression here because at least half the country has been mislead to believe in such fairy tale nonsense. Lots of books have been written about these topics, yet none of them have overturned basic math and physics involved in replacing hydrocarbon fuels with electronics or electrical devices.

Fast-growing bamboo would not meaningfully change the math involved in moving the number and total mass of machines that powers an industrialized economy. Beyond that, bamboo grows in tropical climates, not the plains of Ohio, Indiana, and Nebraska. If bamboo could affect the industrialized world so greatly, then surely China would've figure that out by now.

Senator Manchin is thinking about the whole, but mostly he's thinking about the importance of living and breathing Americans over fanciful ideas that don't work at the scale required. The people who think he's not are the same ones who believe batteries can replace gasoline.

Transportation accounts for anywhere between 5% and 20% (pipelines vs ships vs tanker cars in trains vs trucks) of the price of a gallon of gasoline or diesel fuel. The costs associated with extraction accounts for 50% to 60% of the final price paid at the pump.

Calliban · 2022-11-15 04:18:28

Trouble ahead for global oil production.
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Crude-Oil/H … agree.html

Exploration budgets have shrunk to pitiful levels compared to a decade ago. Budgets are now closer to what they were in the 1990s. But the 1990s was a different world. Oil traded in the $10-20 range. The north sea, GOM and Alaska were all growing; Brazil was an up and coming oil province and only a handful of nations had passed peak oil. Fast fwd 25 years and only a handful of nations have not passed peak oil. Russia is past peak and it's oil is dropping off the market thanks to military adventurism. We live in a far tougher environment now. ESG activist groups will be responsible for pushing the world into an energy induced depression.

tahanson43206 · 2022-11-15 07:40:03

For Calliban re #780 and previous discussion....

Recently (a couple of weeks ago perhaps) I offered the hypothesis that the UK may have an advantage over all other Nations, due to it's hard won tradition of governance, and specifically the function of "head of State" as distinguished from the "head of government".

King Charles is inheritor of (approximately) 1000 years of that tradition, although it is likely the force of his words is less in modern times than was true previously.

Never-the-less, I am guessing that an ambition to organize the people who recognize King Charles as a leader of substance might lead to energy abundance for the people who enlist to bring about that future.

In this forum, we have discussed the potential of Earth-interior energy supply, as well as nuclear fission.

Nuclear fusion is still "out there" as a possibility.

It would take ** someone ** in the penumbra of positive regard for King Charles, to write a letter suggesting ambition along these lines

The selfish impulse would seek to amass energy and material objects for the individual or a small group. That is the essence of capitalism.

The generous impulse would seek to distribute energy and material objects to the large group, in the sure knowledge that the productivity of the population will increase as it gains both energy and the means to produce more goods and services.

(th)

SpaceNut · 2022-11-17 22:01:39

St. Croix refinery cannot restart without new permit, air pollution tech -EPA

U.S. regulators will require a new Clean Air Act permit for a troubled oil refinery in the U.S. Virgin Islands, which could cost its owners hundreds of millions of dollars and take three years or more to obtain, the Environmental Protection Agency said on Thursday.
The idled St. Croix refinery, formerly the largest in the Western Hemisphere, was expected to boost overall supply in the Caribbean, a key transit point for petroleum shipments, but was shut after just a few months of operation.
The EPA shut down the refinery, formerly called Limetree Bay, in May 2021 after a series of chemical releases into the environment sickened neighboring residents.

Condition of disrepair is why its not active....

kbd512 · 2022-11-18 18:10:49

SpaceNut,

Very few companies, regardless of size, can spend 700 million dollars on air scrubbers for a single low-volume oil refinery that may not make that much in profit over its entire service life. The refinery was sold for 62 million dollars, so it sounds as if the EPA is demanding 3/4 of a billion dollars in renovations, which seems silly to me. The only reason the neighboring residents haven't all died from various "natural causes", is the energy that such refineries were providing to begin with. It would be cheaper to move all of them away from the refinery if it's that much of a problem. The US Virgin Islands is home to about 106,000 people in total, and now some number of them no longer have any jobs.

So, universal poverty or bust?

That seems to be the end goal of our climate changers.

How about we enforce the same regulations on photovoltaic, wind turbine, and battery manufacturers?

You don't get to use a single kilo of coal, oil, or natural gas to make any of your products. The fossil fuel industry can quit funding their green idiocy. No plastics or metals refining that uses fossil fuel energy. No diesel-powered machinery, either. If you can't produce sunshine and brainfarts at a reasonable price, then the EPA drives your not-green energy business, out of business. We all know what the result would be- instant and complete shut-down of these not-very-green energy industries that both demands a lot of greenbacks and produces very little energy.

kbd512 · 2022-11-21 04:48:01

I finally had a moment of clarity after pondering over the results of this overly-elaborate Chinese fire drill for the past 20 years. There is not one lousy Watt of power, not even nuclear power, that did not ultimately derive from burning something for energy. It's a fundamental part of how the universe works. Stars do it. Every living thing does it. Whether or not other people accept that or not is irrelevant. That's the ultimate truth. All energy systems capable of powering a technologically advanced civilization require heat and lots of it. Everything else is a pointless side-show- much ado about nothing. The entire premise behind "green energy" is more Roman Entertainment to keep people very busy while not actually solving problems. Its entire purpose is to keep people fighting each other over utter nonsense, so that more enterprising individuals can profit off of their inability to accept mortality. A new-age religion for people who think they don't believe in "god", despite all the evidence to the contrary.

For this to no longer be true, we would have to overturn a lot of physical laws or obtain a lot of fully processed resources without burning something. If we don't start all the way back at the mines and forges, then we're only playing a shell game, and only deluding ourselves if we think what we created was not the byproduct of fire. That is the lasting importance of our "first discovery". Thousands of years of civilization and evolution have passed us by, but what "keeps us going" ties right back to our first discovery. The fancier tools are only window dressing that belies the truth of the matter.

Calliban · 2022-11-21 06:35:46

Most renewable energy sources are practically useless in reducing our dependance on fossil fuels. Firstly, with wind and solar power, intermittency requires the provision of a backup powerplant. This backup powerplant is usually a combined cycle gas turbine plant. The powerplant must be manned and maintained, regardless of its load factor. It must pay capital, operating and maintenance costs. And thermal cycling will tend to increase maintenance costs. The only positive thing the wind / solar plant does is marginally reduce fuel consumption. The operator of the backup plant is not usually compensated for lost generation. Systematic generation costs increase, because the grid must pay for both sets of capital, operating and mainenance costs, as well as additional transmission infrastructure and batteries for grid frequency control. The only economic positive is a marginal reduction in fuel use, which is greatly outweighed by other costs. This is why countries with a lot of intermittent renewable generation in their energy mix, tend to have higher electricity prices.

But wait...that reduction in fuel consumption reduces the environmental cost of electricity right? Maybe that is worth the extra cost? Wrong. The intermittent renewables require orders of magnitude more refined materials than competing fossil or nuclear systems. This material must be dug out of the ground, refined, manufactured, transported and assembled. Mining the material comes at the expense of natural habitats. Mining, refining, manufacturing, transportation and assembly, are all fossil fuel intensive activities. These steps are particularly hungry for diesel and natural gas, which are the fossil fuels with the most imminent supply constraints. So intermittent renewables increase systematic costs for little or no reduction in CO2 emissions and they aggrevate resource problems. The work described in the article below, reveals that reserves of many important elements are insufficient for even one generation of renewable energy infrastructure at present energy consumption levels.
https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/08/23 … place-oil/

Even if new resources were found sufficient, mining this much material without the use of fossil fuels would be a near impossible task. Large amounts of energy presently consumed in other areas of industry would need to be diverted to energy production.

Intermittent renewables provide very little net benefit to either the planet or human civilisation. These energy sources are being misapplied to attempt to power industrial civilisation. The reality is that they could provide some benefit in provision of small amounts of power in situations where a grid connection would dominate total costs. You don't power a pocket calculator or mobile traffic lights with nuclear reactors. Conversly, it isn't sensible to power a blast furnance or city with solar panels. Nuclear reactors can entirely displace fossil fuels from electricity production. But using them to produce synthetic fuels would be expensive. As a society, we need an intelligent conversation aboutvwhat is realistically achievable. This doesn't happen, because the people in charge are incapable of facing up to the flaws in their cherished beliefs. So we end up on a road to nowhere.

Last edited by Calliban (2022-11-21 07:03:21)

SpaceNut · 2022-11-21 08:29:27

Agreed kbd512 that burning is not the issue its energy greed in that we want more and more each day to make life easy for oneself. As you noted from the dawn of time we made use of the energy of fires release to heat, cook and for light but it was hard to maintain as it required us to feed its hunger by gathering or cutting the fuel to feed its appetite. It is that hunger of the fire and of our need that continues to grow each day without abating.

I went out this morning to a 20' F temperature that is not all that surprising for the time of year here while there is no heating in my home it was still 50' F inside. The morning drive took me by the local gas station and its price had dropped to $3.93 down from the other days 6 cents higher price.

Yes, I have had oil and wood used in the basement to create forced or hot air to heat the home, but they never truly made the home warm until we caused it to burn to much of that hard earned cash. I have also used LPG for heating hot water and even back then its cost was after a while prohibitive to continue its use.

Since I must live with how the home was constructed in that the basement is partially exposed to the air and is only partly below the ground, I must solve how to isolate it from the cold to keep it from conducting it into the homes living space through its walls of cinder blocks to allow the basement to become warmer before heating from there will be effective.

tahanson43206 · 2022-11-21 08:58:12

For kbd512 re Post #785

I have an engineer friend who often uses the word "expensive" when he doesn't like a concept.

The word "expensive" is a weasel word. It tells us nothing useful, but instead expresses the writer's disdain for whatever the word is applied do.

I am sure that was not your intent in using the word, but it triggered an association with prior experience, so I am motivated to ask for clarification.

In the past, you have created a set of posts that show how synthetic fuel can be made from renewable energy.

In Post #785 you seem to be arguing that use of nuclear fission power for that purpose is not the best use of that form of energy.

Please replace the word "expensive" with the words that more accurately reflect the pros and cons of using a nuclear reactor to make synthetic fuel.

From my perspective, the use of nuclear fuel to make electrical power has been understandable because electrical power is easy to make (compared to synthetic fuel) and the market was able to support ventures along those lines.

However, in the intervening years, it appears that nuclear reactors are failing to compete effectively with natural gas in the electric generation market, so they are falling out of favor, and even out of use, just as they are most needed.

I suspect you have good and sufficient reasons for your point of view.

If you have time (and I know your time is limited) please develop your ideas a bit further, to help your readers understand why you have taken the position you have.

The world could actually ** use ** solid thinking on the subject of energy production.

You are publishing in an out-of-the-way forum that has very little exposure to the outside world (that I am aware of). However, good ideas, well developed and well presented, ** can ** transition to wider audiences, as GW Johnson has shown with his papers on aerospace subjects.

(th)

SpaceNut · 2022-11-21 09:47:18

More for the refinery problem

Workers at BP refinery will not help with restart unless wage demands met -union

Workers are seeking a pay package representing a 9.5% increase, citing current Dutch inflation rates above 14%, while management has offered a package including a 5% increase and a one-off 4,000 euro ($4,092.80) bonus.
($1 = 0.9773 euros)

This will affect those overseas as the power of the unions cause grief.

kbd512 · 2022-11-21 11:19:50

tahanson43206,

The term "green" or "renewable" placed in front of the word "energy", are both monumentally greater "weasel words" when compared to the word "expensive". Our "green weasels" must think the other "ordinary weasels" can't count. Those annoying "counting weasels" are the reason why airplanes are made from Aluminum alloys or Carbon Fiber composites, rather than Lead or Tungsten or Gold- they recognize the futility and silliness of making airplanes into slightly more aerodynamic approximations of boat anchors. If you put enough thrust behind a boat anchor then you can still make it fly, but it's clearly not optimized for that purpose. That's why engineers chose different designs for boat anchors and aircraft. It had nothing to do with crushing the dreams of Tungsten enthusiasts. Aerospace engineers are ultimately pragmatists who recognize when something doesn't work well enough to be worth pursuing. No matter how much money you have, energy is not free. There are also many other worthwhile uses for energy / money, apart from generating and consuming energy, hence no aircraft structures fabricated from Tungsten alloys, apart from very small control surface counter-weights.

Despite the fact that our Tungsten enthusiasts have been told "no" by aerospace engineers (Tungsten is the strongest metal and doesn't rust, so why can't we make airplanes out of a very heavy and expensive Tungsten metal so they "last forever"?), the end result is that anyone living in an industrialized country can afford to take a trip once per year aboard one of our non-boat-anchor jet aircraft that either save (cancer patients from Africa) or improve (business exec meeting another person face-to-face, seeing your aging mother before she dies, visiting your grandchildren during the summer, etc) lives through that "evil" freedom of travel capability provided. That's the "black magic" of math used in engineering. It turns reasonably good (read "efficient") ideas into functional hardware that makes life better, and ignores that capricious demands of Tungsten enthusiasts who fail to consider all other considerations associated with designing usable aircraft.

There's nothing "green" about strip-mining the Earth to extract all the minerals and metals required to produce enough electronics to generate and then store all the energy required for people to merely maintain their current standard of living. That standard of living also provides advanced education, medicine, food, water, etc. The energy abundance produced by energy-dense fuel is why we can afford to throw a few billion here and there to feed starving kids in Africa, to send people into space, and to create photovoltaics and wind turbines and batteries. Those were all byproducts of energy abundance, not energy poverty. You know, all that stuff our "green energy" / "renewable energy" advocates take for granted, that cannot be generated or otherwise delivered by photovoltaics and wind turbines and batteries, because food crops have this very annoying habit of rotting in the fields when they're not harvested in a timely manner and humans have this annoying habit of dying without clean drinking water.

Unfortunately for our green energy evangelists, who never give cost its due regard so long as it's "someone else's money" or they're so wealthy that poverty seems like an impossibility to them, there is nothing green about the machines they want to build, nor the methods used to do it. They don't equate money with the energy abundance used to generate it, because they can't how avocado toast and lesbian interpretive dance were not job titles before the energy abundance which they've known for their entire lives. You can go to a farming village in Africa or India if you want to see what life looks like without that energy abundance.

The only "green" I see is in the color of the money used to turn their inconsiderate valuation system into monuments to their ignorance of math, as they light other peoples' money on fire through their insistence on building short-lived / high embodied energy / low energy return Rube Goldberg-esque devices that have already forced tens of millions of people deeper into poverty than they already were (Germany and most of Europe, Sri Lanka, China, India, and now America).

Speaking of weasel ideology, you're suggesting that nuclear power doesn't compete with natural gas, but the combination of coal / gas / photovoltaic "green energy" has already cost Germany more money than building enough reactors to cover 100% of their electricity demands, to the point that they're right back to burning coal again. Basically, their "green energy" was only ever enabled by all that other energy and monetary wealth surplus that no longer exists, because it was all squandered on "green dreams" that greatly resemble a mile-high pile of stinky brown stuff from where I'm sitting. I am talking about the BS that flows so freely from the minds and mouths of people volunteering everyone else's money in pursuit of their dead-end for humanity, not the piles of lignite coal being burned to fuel them.

Only after you commit to ignoring all natural resource constraints and the staggering consumption rates of those natural resources, do all forms of power appear "cheap" compared to nuclear power. The level of solipsism (only what goes on in my own head is "real"), required to actually believe that is truly breathtaking. You commit to ignoring all basic math related to energy production and consumption and myopically focus on some aspect of energy ideology you find aesthetically appealing, such as the idea or notion that sunlight is "green energy" and "in harmony with nature". Well, maybe it is, but it still starts with a nuclear reaction ("black magic" to the religious faithful). The closer you are to that giant nuclear reactor, the easier it is to harness the reactor's power.

We can make every effort to manipulate ideological valuation of energy to align with "green ideology", but at the end of the day math says your beliefs about energy don't change whether or not you starve to death without food or freeze to death without heat in the winter. If you must exhibit slavish devotion to some ideology in order to replace the traditional religions, then demonstrate that in the application of basic math and at worst you won't like the aesthetics of the solutions that basic math produces, but you'll still be alive to witness it. This is the difference between someone who is a pragmatist, rather than an ideologue. My pragmatism says my personal beliefs about energy are irrelevant to how and why it works, or doesn't. Unless we discover a new element to add to the periodic table, such as Unobtainium, then all existing rules, laws, and regulations regarding energy systems apply with full force at all times to everyone, and everywhere, personal beliefs be damned.

So, "live your truth" as it relates to "green energy", your own personal fictionalized account of how the physical universe and energy works, but be prepared to accept the very real and very severe consequences of energy fiction, which is paid for in terms of lives lost to an unworkable ideology, because addition, multiplication, efficiency, energy density, and fancy but simple-to-understand buzz-words like "EROEI" are all very real mathematical concepts that govern what works and what doesn't, within the realm of both the universe and all derived energy systems operating within the universe.

kbd512 · 2022-11-21 11:31:14

SpaceNut,

Solar stocks drop as China said to seek ways to curb soaring solar PV prices

China heatwave hits supply chain for lithium batteries and solar panels as Sichuan power cut impacts key producers

Calliban · 2022-11-21 12:33:05

TH, I will clarify what I mean by 'expensive'.

One barrel of oil equivelant (BOE) contains about 1.7MWh of chemical energy, which is released as heat what it is burned. Suppose we want to use nuclear or solar energy to make synthetic fuels. We first produce hydrogen, either through electrolysis or thermochemical water splitting. The second is better from an efficiency viewpoint. The first is technically easier. We then react hydrogen with nitrogen or CO2 to produce either ammonia, alcohol, ether or hydrocarbons. The efficiency of thermochemical water splitting can be up to 80% efficient by deploying the Iodine-sulphur cycle at very high temperatures (1000°C). Electrolysis can also be 80% efficient, but starts with electricity rather than heat. After reacting H2 with N2 or CO2, let us optimistically assume that half of the original energy ends up being stored in the fuel. So we need 3.4MWh of electricity or high heat to manufacture synfuels that contain the same energy as 1 barrel of oil.

How much does 3.4MWh cost? For a PWR that had settled its capital costs, a cheap generating cost would be $0.05/kWh. Most people pay a lot more than that. In the UK, the average domestic customers pays about 6x more for electricity. Even so at $0.05/kWh, or $50/MWh, the electricity needed to produce 1 barrel of oil equivelant would cost $170. On top of that would be capital and operating costs for the fuel synthesis plant. So realistically, even if cheap nuclear power were used to make fuel, it would still cost us something like $200/barrel. Most people would consider that to be expensive.

It is possible for nuclear power to produce synfuels more cheaply. Maybe reactors can be mass produced and regulation streamlined. Maybe high temperature gas reactors can be coupled with thermochemical plants. But both developments are a significant change from where we are now and both require substantial develpment. Right now, we know NPPs can produce cheap electricity, because they have done so many times before. They only fail to do so when they are made to comply with rules that the green crowd invent. By converting electricity supply to nuclear, the natural gas and oil remaining can be repurposed for transportation and industrial heat. This buys us several more decades to come up with a longer term solution.

Last edited by Calliban (2022-11-21 12:45:26)

SpaceNut · 2022-11-21 12:55:27

Yes, and currently I am at $0.23/kwh and expecting that to rise as the end of that PUC contract expires where they can ask for another rate hike.

Oil prices hit 10-month low on OPEC+ production boost report

Saudi Arabia and other OPEC oil producers are discussing an output increase.
Brent crude futures for January had slipped $4.07, or 4.7%, to $83.55 a barrel by 1518 GMT.
U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures for December were down $4.02, or 5%, at $76.06 ahead of the contract's expiry later on Monday. The more active January contract was down $3.82, or 4.8%, at $76.29.
An increase of up to 500,000 barrels per day (bpd) will be discussed at the OPEC+ meeting on Dec. 4,

Oil dips near 2-month lows as supply concerns ease

The EU's energy policy chief told Reuters the EU expected to have its regulations completed in time for the introduction of a G7 plan to cap the price of Russian crude on Dec. 5.
Diesel markets remained tight, with Europe and the United States competing for barrels. While China nearly doubled its diesel exports in October from a year earlier to 1.06 million tonnes, the volume was well below September's 1.73 million tonnes.

There is optimism that U.S. gas prices on decline, could near $3 per gallon by Christmas

AAA reported a national average retail price of $3.66 for a gallon of regular unleaded for Monday, about 10 cents per gallon lower than one week ago. High state taxes mean California has the highest state average at $5.25 per gallon, while Texas is boasting an average of $2.99, the lowest price in the nation.
Brent, the global benchmark for the price of oil, was trading at $84.36 per barrel, down 3.7% as of 9:30 a.m. EST. It was about $10per barrel higher at the beginning of the month.

kbd512 · 2022-11-21 13:30:03

Calliban,

The point I think is lost is that 100% of the output product from a fuel synthesis plant can be gasoline or diesel or ammonia, assuming you intend to produce specific products, and the same equipment with some tweaking can produce different products. $170 per barrel equates to $4.04 per gallon of gasoline, which is pretty much what we're already paying. SMRs, at least in theory, could make nuclear power half of its present cost, so $2.00 to $2.50 per gallon of gasoline, which would still permit organic economic growth and allow more people to rise up out of poverty, so that they can be indoctrinated to believe the various falsehoods sold to them as part of the package deal peddled by most indoctrination centers masquerading as secondary education institutions.

SpaceNut · 2022-11-21 16:10:08

Part of that infrastructure bill that all faught against along party lines was for Biden administration earmarks $13b to modernize electric grid

Of course, the issue is that "we need more transmission capacity, and we needed it yesterday" but that is just power distribution but what about creation.

According to the Department of Energy, the US needs to add 60 percent more electrical transmission capacity to the grid by 2030, and may need to triple current capacity by 2050 to accommodate the transition to clean energy and additional demand from home and automotive electrification.
At the same time, "nearly 70 percent of the nation's grid [is] more than 25 years old,"

Of course, that is where so-called green energy can help but not if we trust to it as fast as it is made.
Hyundai wants to help you put solar and batteries in your home

solar panels paired with a home battery can add an additional layer of eco-consciousness and power stability to their lives. home battery storage solution, and an EV charging system that’s right for an individual home. Unlike offerings from Tesla and GM, Hyundai isn’t building or selling its own hardware. Instead, it partnered with established players in the industry.

So, what they are doing is partnering to build what the EV and home needs as a pair to drop the dependency of it coming from the grid.

AA14mCjl.img?w=768&h=432&m=6

Maybe with the fire risk we should not build so close to the home even with this add on enhancement.

kbd512 · 2022-11-21 16:32:44

SpaceNut,

What does "modernize" actually mean?

What will that 13 billion actually pay for, as opposed to what Democrats claim it will pay for?

They could've done that 10 years ago when President Obama was still in office and had both houses of Congress.

$2.5 billion for grid resilience - utter BS; grids are fully connected or "up", or they're ""down", and if they're down they're useless
$3 billion for smart grids - allow foreign countries and hackers to shut down major parts of our electric grids
$5 billion for innovative grid concepts - blowing more mad money on things never proven to work at all

Democrats handing out cash to their sponsors with no expectation of actually improving anything. In other words, business as usual. Results don't matter. Throwing public money at a problem solves everything, except the problem it's supposed to solve, namely grid capacity for all these new battery powered electronic gadgets masquerading as cars.

From "theconversation.com":

By my analysis, the current (depreciated) value of the U.S. electric grid, comprising power plants, wires, transformers and poles, is roughly US$1.5 to $2 trillion. To replace it would cost almost $5 trillion.

Why do you people keep voting for this idiocy?

A bunch of screwballs who can't speak or write clearly, people like President Biden who don't know what planet they're on, are not going to solve your grid problems, but they are going to bankrupt you while pretending to do it.

70% of what we have is older than 25 years, and it'll cost 3.5 trillion dollars to replace that much, but some Derpistani from President Biden's Administration thought they were going to do it with 13 billion.

Don't act shocked when nothing is delivered 2 years from now and quit demanding more of our money for things you're not interested in actually doing.

kbd512 · 2022-11-21 16:55:24

When are we going to quit screwing around with these fabulous time and money wasters and actually do something modestly productive that we can then point to, if ever the general public wants to know how the money spent actually benefited them?

If you want your all-electric future, then America needs at least 4X the present grid capacity. You won't have that for a song and dance.

Smart grids?

I'd settle for half-way smart voters who know how to count.

SpaceNut · 2022-11-21 17:24:02

Smart mean it monitors and can signal that there is an issue long before people can call and quite possibly reconnect power by disconnecting and back feeding section to bring customers back up.
Smart meters are also real so as to save time getting meter readings of the customers usage.
A robust grid can also take and make smaller grids easier to switch power excess in other directions.
A grid that does not go down when a hurricane, tornado or winter weather rolls through that is properly cleared of trees that extend into the lane that they pass through.

tahanson43206 · 2022-11-21 19:06:30

For Calliban re #791

You have interacted in the past with "Dayton Engineer"

I was thinking of "Dayton Engineer" when I complained about the use of "expensive" as a shortcut to avoid a long explanation.

However, in the accident of your inspiration by the complaint, you have gifted us all with a helpful explanation of the "expense" of making hydrocarbon (or other synthetic) fuels using nuclear fission power.

On Mars, this will not be an issue.

With the except of Louis homestead, ** all ** viable Mars settlements will be using nuclear power for base supply, with solar as an unreliable but useful supplement.

What I'm leading toward is that your hint that costs of making synthetic fuels using nuclear fission might be reduced is worth making a bet on.

It crossed my mind recently that if the human race put all the enriched Uranium currently stored (safely we hope) in nuclear weapons to use for peaceful purposes, we (humans) would almost instantly enjoy a greatly enhanced standard of living.

In addition, my understanding is that the fission reactor(s?) running in the Earth's core are producing energy in sufficient quantity so that every human on Earth would enjoy a high standard of living, if that energy could be safely captured.

On top of that, as I've pointed out numerous times, the Sun is producing vast amounts of energy that is heading out into the Universe, to serve no useful purpose as far as I know.

It seems to me the key to harnessing all these supplies is to organize human beings to trust each other enough to accomplish some useful work.

(th)

kbd512 · 2022-11-21 19:42:48

SpaceNut,

If your average family with 2 EVs will be consuming 4X more electricity than one using 2 gasoline powered cars, then that means you need to have pipes that can handle 4 more juice. Whether the grid can tell who is drawing power is irrelevant. What about that do you not get? It's not a matter of "monitoring their usage". It's a matter of having pipes big enough for every family on the block to do the same thing. Pipe size and flow rate are not hard concepts to master. Unless you think researching "how electricity flows down wires" is going to change our understanding of voltage and amperage, then you need 4X bigger pipes to use the magical new EVs. Grids not going down after storms has more to do with things other than management of electricity, such as trimming trees away from high voltage lines. California utterly failed to do that.

Ever notice how all these simple things that require spending a lot of money are not done, despite not being the least bit technically challenging to do, all while more and more money is spent chasing after trivial pursuits (smart grid / smart meter / grid resilience)?

Grids are not resilient to shorting them out or knocking the transmission wires down by trees during a major storm. Humans are supposed to be resilient and intelligent enough not to allow that to happen.

The nannies want to make sure you don't wash your dishes too often, plug your car in at a time they don't approve of, take a shower that's longer than they approve of, or keep your house warmer or cooler than they approve of, which is the only reason they're wasting our tax money trying to micromanage electricity usage.

SpaceNut · 2022-11-21 19:51:18

The real issue for mars is the energy cost to gather the necessary water to start the process with as its only 9Liters for a 1/2 cubic meter of soil average with more possibly like on the moon in chronically dark craters.

Then comes the energy for splitting it into elements whether it's by heat or electrical energy matters not as that is the largest portion of energy required to make the fuel to this point.

For mars while we will save the oxygen from the splitting process, we will need way more and that source could be from the oxide soils, but they can also come from the Martian air. Either way the outcome is more energy to make use of in heat or electrical energy to get the oxygen that we need.

post 794 image is an off-grid charging system and that can be supplemented by grid when it's not enough.

Interior Department announces new proposed oil and gas lease sales in Nevada, Utah

The land in question includes 63,603.89 acres on 35 parcels in Nevada and 31,808 acres across 18 parcels in Utah
Under the updated regulations, minimum bids would be set at $10 per acre, a fivefold increase from the previous minimum of $2 per acre. This marks the first increase in the minimum in 35 years.
The sales will also reflect updated royalty rates for oil and gas leasing, with minimum rates increasing from 12.5 percent to 16.7 percent. Meanwhile, while rental rates before the act were $1.50 per acre for five years and $2 per year thereafter, the new rates will increase to $3 per acre for the initial two years, $5 an acre for the third through eighth years and $15 in the ninth and tenth years.

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