Thread: About Oil

Originally Posted by M21Sniper

One of the basic ingedients of leftist KooL AiD scaremongering is that we're "killing the earth".

Like George Carlin says, we couldn't kill the earth if we tried. Us maybe(extremely doubtful, but eh), the Earth?

Um, no.

LOL...

Lord Carlin, a brilliant mind indeed.

Originally Posted by Sea Toby

2. Ban any future natural gas plants, convert gas plants to either nuclear or coal. Why are we wasting oil and gas to produce electricity.

Hi Sea Toby,

Here are some details surrouding the issue you have put forth to put it into perspective:

1. most of the natural gas generating plants, AFAIK are of the peak shaving variety and are not running all of the time;

2. from starting the process to finish, construction of a coal fired power plant takes about ten years whereas a natural gas peaker can be had in about five years and I suspect you would be lucky to get a fission plant inside of 20;

3. for every new oil discovery, there are four new natural gas discoveries;

4. while most of the oil appears to be concentrated in areas of questionable stability (e.g. Venezuela, the Middle East, the Caspian Basin, etc.), natural gas is much more geographically distributed which helps insure a steady supply;

5. a well developed gas infrastructure including LNG and GTL capabilities has other benefits as natural gas is a vital feedstock to a variety of industries outside of the power business;

6. natural gas is here now and the problem is now so why not exploit it handsomely to move away from oil we import from spurious actors so we can buy time to move onto the Next Big Thing?;

7. (if I am reading the numbers correctly) in the time it took oil to triple in price, the price of U308 doubled on the spot market (up almost a third from January of this year, as a matter of fact). The spot price of UF6 went up 5% in July. Nuclear fuel is not getting cheaper at the current demand level;

8. in the time it took oil to triple in price, the cost of natural gas has come down by half. Granted it is undesriably high still as the electricity generation from natural gas trend was predicated on $3.00 to $4.00 per million BTUs. However, one tanker of LNG has more heating content than one tanker of crude oil so it is still a bargain at the price.

9. There may be far, far more gas available above current generous reserves when one examines methane hydrates in subsea ice and other interesting places.

While I share the general sentiment of your statement and definitely favor moving away from oil, the theoretically ideal nuclear option is far down the pike and expanded coal use is not exactly instantaneous nor neccessarily desirable.

In my mind, the way out is as follows (loosley, of course):

1. Energy reform starts at the light switch. We need immediate and widespread conservation and increases in efficiency. These can be accomplished today, not 5, 10 or 20 years down the road;

2. Radically expanded natural gas efforts including LNG imports and GTL plants to offset oil imports (might as well develop a coal-to-liquids capability paralell to the GTL capability as a hedge given the vast US coal reserves);

3. Start working very hard on a robust nuclear industry centering around new ideas and technologies such as pebble bed and gas cooled reactors as well as upgrades to the grid including super conducting hardware as it becomes available and practical

Regards,

William