On Sat, 24 Nov 2007 07:44:10 GMT, Jere Lull wrote:

On 2007-11-22 06:23:18 -0500, Bruce in Bangkok said:

On Thu, 22 Nov 2007 07:14:35 GMT, Jere Lull wrote:

On 2007-11-21 20:39:15 -0500, Bruce in Bangkok said:

Of course, oil is finite and the day will come when it is no longer
available but I doubt that anyone knows with any certainty when that
will occur.

I agree and am personally working towards zero "oil" consumption (even
bio-oil that I currently consume), but reiterate that some sources of
"oil" will be available if, and only if, the cost of the raw materials
rises to a realistic value.

If "crude" rises to $200 per barrel, reserves will "expand" exponentially.

I think I mentioned that there are many fields that for one reason or
another were too expensive to produce at $60 dollar crude that are now
viable. When the price hits $200 then more fields will be opened up.

That was what I was referring to. I recall reading that there
astounding amounts of oil in North America, just too expensive.

We worked on a project for City Service who drilled two wells in the
Java Sea; and found oil. The oil had a very high paraffin content and
solidified at normal temperatures so City Service abandoned the field.
In a discussion while they were closing down their operation I asked
about the oil and was told that, "it would cosy too much to produce it
but we won;t forget it and some day the price will go up and we'll
come back".

Alternate energy look more affordable at those levels, too.

'Course, there's always coal, which is dirt cheap... Looks like about
$30 per ton.

The Oil Shale "experiment worked but was too expensive at the time to
produce oil. Perhaps next year?

By the way, at the present it is probably impossible to be a zero oil
consumer since a very large portion of world crude production is used
in other then power production. Nearly all plastics and a great deal of
the fertilizer used are made from oil. I'm not 100% sure but I'd guess
that much of your boat is actually made from oil.

Yes, it did consume a bunch of oil -- 35 years ago. That really can't
be considered current consumption. While we're out, our major energy
consumption is probably for ice, though our food energy/oil bill is
probably pretty big, but I have no way to calculate the components.

I agree, it's probably next to impossible to not consume oil somewhere
along the line, but it's possible to get very low.


I recently read an abstract of a paper that discussed alternate
sources of feed stock for the plastics industry. It stated that:

"Over 99% of all plastics are produced or derived from the major
non-renewable energy sources – crude oil, natural gas, naptha and coal
– which are used as both an energy and feedstock material in
processing."

While power and heating obviously consume massive amounts of oil the
none power use is also huge.

So when you put the new poly lines on the boat.......


Bruce-in-Bangkok
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