Posted on 01/16/2008 12:35:46 AM PST by Brian S. Fitzgerald
THE world's biggest car maker, General Motors, believes the global oil supply has peaked and a switch to electric cars is inevitable.
In a stunning announcement at the opening of the Detroit Motor Show yesterday, GM's chairman and chief executive officer, Rick Wagoner, said ethanol was an important interim solution to the demand for oil, until battery technology gave electric cars the range of petrol-powered cars.
GM is working on an electric car, the Volt due in showrooms in 2010 but delays in battery technology have slowed its development...
(Excerpt) Read more at energybulletin.net ...
The oil supply has “peaked” only in that we have locked up vast sources of new oil and will not permit it to be produced.
Luddites Rule!
In 1897 H.B. 246 was unanimously passed by the State House of Representatives to set the value of Pi at exactly 3.2
The bill was assigned to the Senate Committee on Temperance where (thankfully) it died.
Unfortunately in the late ‘80s when the gubment was selecting which course to take-ethanol or methanol ADM threw a ton of money at congress to steer us toward ethanol-and it worked. ADM won, and the American people lost.
Your corn yield is low. This past year it was 151 bushels per acre.
Your mustard yield is WAY high. This past year it was 10 bushels per acre.
Uh oh! I made a BIG mistake - I skipped the lbs/bushel conversion and used it for the bushel/acre and blew my numbers!
What an idiot am I!
There is more oil on this planet than human beings could ever use in the next 1000 years.
At what rate? Right now production is on the order of 100 million barrels per day, and proven reserves are approx. 1 trillion barrels, giving about 30 years until exhaustion.
How are the reserves “proven” - and what precludes more oil from existing besides that which is proven?
It’s not there because we haven’t found it?
We haven’t looked in some places because of the cost and/or regulations that prohibit looking there or developing there.
Except that Clinton tied it up as a national monument so that his campaign donors, who happen to be sitting on the only other known low sulfur deposit in the world, could have a near monopoly on coal sales.
Reserve is a dual use term. It means, commonly, how much oil might be left in the ground that is produceable, and technically how much more could be produced right now today. Arabia has oil in the ground to last 1000 years, but no reserve capacity.
Proved reserves do not include ANWR, most of NPRA, most of OCS and many, many other areas. They do not include Oil Shale and only recently included a portion of oil sands despite 4 decades of production from them.
Ethanol as a viable FUEL in quantity is an interim JOKE. Now bring me another beer!
There's always exploration going on, and who knows what will be found - but future planning has to be based on what we know for sure. I'm sure the Saudis - and we - have worst case scenerios to ponder.
what is that in barrels?
400 billion in the ground.
the estimates i've seen for ANWR are 3-16 billion barrels
Methanol fuel derived from renewable sources receives the same tax treatment as ethanol fuel.
I’ve never seen an ANWR estimate as low as 3 BBls.
USGS says 5.7 to 16.0 based upon technology of the 1990’s. Mean value of 10.4 billion barrels. NPRA ranging from 6.7 to 15.0 billion barrels, with a mean value of 10.6 billion barrels. OCS is probably at least 85.9 billion barrels.
Utah is believed to have 19.2 billion barrels in oil sands.
The Green River Formation in Utah, Colorado and Wyoming are estimated to have 1,200 to 1,800 billion barrels in oil shale. More than 2,000 billion barrels across the nation.
http://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/fs-0028-01/fs-0028-01.pdf
http://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/2002/fs045-02/
http://www.mms.gov/revaldiv/PDFs/2006NationalAssessmentBrochure.pdf
http://ostseis.anl.gov/guide/tarsands/index.cfm
http://ostseis.anl.gov/guide/oilshale/index.cfm
http://www.fossil.energy.gov/programs/reserves/npr/npr_oil_shale_program.html
What was tied can be untied. All it will take is enough of an emergency.
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