Make or Break Time for the Middle Class says Obama

[guido911]

Glad to see you know more about the oil industry than people in the oil industry know about it.  Maybe I should start listening to you instead of the oil company execs I had lunch with today.  You seem far better versed on the topic than they do.

Never a dull moment in Nate's household, I suspect.

What do you expect?

[nathanm]

pancakes? You can reason this out yourself.

Conventional oil well: Drill hole in ground, frack, get oil.

Tar Sands: Drill hole in ground, frack, pump in vast amounts of steam, pump out oil and sand mixture, separate sand from oil, get largely bitumen.
Tar Sands alternative: Dig giant hole in ground, dump the result into a machine that uses vast amounts of steam to separate the sand from oil, again resulting in bitumen.

Afterwards, crack the bitumen into lighter oils to make a saleable product.

Which one requires more energy?

Gaspar, you might note I didn't say jack smile about pollution.

[Gaspar]

Glad to see you know more about the oil industry than people in the oil industry know about it.  Maybe I should start listening to you instead of the oil company execs I had lunch with today.  You seem far better versed on the topic than they do.

Never a dull moment in Nate's household, I suspect.

He has a point.  It is easier to stick a big metal straw in the earth and suck out oil.  Where he gets lost is trying to imply that the return on investment does not exist.

I doubt that oil businesses are just doing this to clean up the landscape out of the kindness of their hearts.  I bet they're making a dollar or two.

[Gaspar]

pancakes? You can reason this out yourself.

Conventional oil well: Drill hole in ground, frack, get oil.

Tar Sands: Drill hole in ground, frack, pump in vast amounts of steam, pump out oil and sand mixture, separate sand from oil, get largely bitumen.
Tar Sands alternative: Dig giant hole in ground, dump the result into a machine that uses vast amounts of steam to separate the sand from oil, again resulting in bitumen.

Afterwards, crack the bitumen into lighter oils to make a saleable product.

Which one requires more energy?

Gaspar, you might note I didn't say jack smile about pollution.

Ok.  I'm just trying to figure out what your point is.

Are you upset because the oil companies might not make enough money?

[nathanm]

Are you upset because the oil companies might not make enough money?

No, I'm upset that we're wasting our dwindling stock of oil at the present time. I'm upset that the extra energy spent on this causes the resultant oil to be even worse carbon-wise than coal. It makes no sense to triple down on an outdated technology.

Note I also never said that there was no return on investment. Stop making up stuff.

Straw oil has an eROI of 20 or so these days. Tar sands have an eROI of 6. Making oil from turkey offal is, as I said, better, with an eROI closer to 12. And it's carbon neutral.

[Conan71]

He has a point.  It is easier to stick a big metal straw in the earth and suck out oil.  Where he gets lost is trying to imply that the return on investment does not exist.

I doubt that oil businesses are just doing this to clean up the landscape out of the kindness of their hearts.  I bet they're making a dollar or two.

I must have opened the curtain on the wizard hit a soft spot.

I sure hope my customers don't figure the return doesn't exist, because they are paying us a smile-pot full of money right now for our expertise on steam extraction.  If Nate understood even 1/2 of the reality of the chemistry and economics of alternative oil extraction, he might be dangerous.  Fortunately, he doesn't even understand half.

[nathanm]

Luckily, I can rely upon experts who can count up the amount of energy in a barrel of oil and count up the energy used to extract that oil. I don't have to personally understand the entire process any more than Roosevelt had to go to Los Alamos and put together a nuclear bomb himself.

That a person can make money doing something does not necessarily mean it's a great thing to be doing.

[Red Arrow]

Does any of that sounds wrong to you?

OK, I'll spell it out for you.  You are spouting the typical left side drivel.  It's kind of like Heiron when he says typical Murdochian RWRE ..... except it's the other side.

[Red Arrow]

No, I'm stating outright that it takes nearly as much energy to extract the oil from the tar sands as we get from the oil when we burn it.

Kind of like ethanol from corn.

[nathanm]

Kind of like ethanol from corn.

Tar sand oil is slightly better, actually. Ethanol from switchgrass is better than tar sands on the energy front, as it requires much less care and feeding.

Someday, when we have more electricity available than we know what to do with, we can synthesize whatever fuels we need without any concern about eROI. Until then, not so much.

[Gaspar]

Someday, when we have more electricity available than we know what to do with, we can synthesize whatever fuels we need without any concern about eROI. Until then, not so much.

I'm just thrilled to see a liberal focused on the profitability and sustainability of the energy industry.

It's a start.

Also, the pipeline will be leased for the transfer of other product as well, so the synthetic oil product that Nate is so worried about the profitability on is not the only product that will be diverted from tanker vessels. Did you know that oil tankers burn bunker fuel, because their emissions are not regulated as deeply as automobiles and just 16 of these tankers produce as much pollution as 800 million cars, according to the international Maritime Organization. That's about all of the cars in the world!

Currently about 65 tankers are used to transport landlocked Alberta's oil products from the Burrand inlet around the world.  The Keystone pipeline could eliminate the need for more than half of these tankers, so it would basically be like eliminating the equivalent emissions of all of the automobiles in the world. . .twice.

[heironymouspasparagus]

Tar sand oil is slightly better, actually. Ethanol from switchgrass is better than tar sands on the energy front, as it requires much less care and feeding.

And marijuana beats switchgrass by almost 2:1.

[Gaspar]

And marijuana beats switchgrass by almost 2:1.

Hard to shove down a pipe. . .

[heironymouspasparagus]

You nothing-but-oil guys are like a Quaalude addict not believing that all the Quaalude factories are being shut down and refusing to move the hell on.

Such refusal to consider the future is going to cause Tulsa to shrivel up and die in the next hundred years along with the oil and gas industries.

Nathan, it's like I said earlier - when the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.

And I would bet you money - or maybe a nice meal at a decent restaurant - that EVERY company "those in denial" work for celebrates and propagandizes the concept of "risk takers" and "thinking outside the box".  I know for a FACT that most of the big oil (Exxon, Shell, Conoco, Citgo - yes, from direct experience) and all the 4 big oil services companies (Baker Hughes, Schlumberger, Halliburton, and Weatherford) do indeed use exactly that type of motivational approach.   And yet, we see where the reality is.

[heironymouspasparagus]

Hard to shove down a pipe. . .

And switchgrass is easy??