Will EVs Send OPEC Into a Death Spiral? (telegraph.co.uk) 206
This week the UK's conservative Daily Telegraph newspaper published an interesting perspective from their world economy editor.
"Saudi and OPEC officials self-evidently do not believe their own claim that world oil demand will keep growing briskly for another generation as if electric vehicles had never been invented, and there was no such thing as the Paris Accord." OPEC had to slash output last October in order to shore up prices. It had to cut again in April. The Saudis then stunned traders with a unilateral cut of one million barrels a day (b/d) in June. All told, the OPEC-Russia cartel has had to take 2m b/d of production off the table at a high point in the economic cycle, after China's post-Covid reopening and at a time when the US economy has been running hot with a fiscal expansion roughly equal to Roosevelt's world war budget.
That 2m b/d figure happens to be more or less the amount of crude currently being displaced by EV sales worldwide, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance.
Yet the mood was all defiance and plucky insouciance at the 24th World Petroleum Congress in Calgary this month... This skips over the awkward detail that EVs are already on track to reach 60pc of total car sales in the world's biggest car market within two years (not a misprint). The cartel is being hit from two sides. Petrol and diesel cars are becoming more efficient, gradually displacing 1.4bn vintage models disappearing into the scrap yard. BP says that alone will cut up to a tenth global oil demand by 2040. With a lag, EVs are now starting to take a material bite, with an S-curve trajectory likely to go parabolic this decade.
China's EVs sales hit 38pc this summer, even though subsidies have mostly been scrapped. This is far ahead of schedule under Beijing's New Energy Vehicle Industry Development Plan. China's Chebai think tank says the emerging consensus is that EV sales will hit 17m or 60pc of total Chinese share by 2025, rising to 90pc by 2030, assuming that the grid can keep up... Vietnam is a few years behind but with similar ambitions. Its EV start-up, VinFast Auto, became the world's third most valuable carmaker after it launched on Nasdaq last month, briefly worth as much as the German car industry before the share price came back down to earth...
OPEC's central premise has long been that the rise of a billion-strong middle class in emerging Asia will more than offset declining oil use in the OECD bloc. That notion is 'withering under scrutiny'... The International Energy Agency (IEA) says global oil demand will peak at 105.5m b/d in 2028 and then flatten for a few years before going into decline... The IEA pulls its punches. The Rocky Mountain Institute argues in its latest report — End of the ICE Age — that half of global car sales could be EVs by 2026, reaching 86pc later this decade.
The article closes by citing "the breathtaking pace of global electrification. The decline of oil in car and bus transport may be closer than almost anybody imagined. OPEC as we know it may be on the cusp of a death spiral."
"Saudi and OPEC officials self-evidently do not believe their own claim that world oil demand will keep growing briskly for another generation as if electric vehicles had never been invented, and there was no such thing as the Paris Accord." OPEC had to slash output last October in order to shore up prices. It had to cut again in April. The Saudis then stunned traders with a unilateral cut of one million barrels a day (b/d) in June. All told, the OPEC-Russia cartel has had to take 2m b/d of production off the table at a high point in the economic cycle, after China's post-Covid reopening and at a time when the US economy has been running hot with a fiscal expansion roughly equal to Roosevelt's world war budget.
That 2m b/d figure happens to be more or less the amount of crude currently being displaced by EV sales worldwide, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance.
Yet the mood was all defiance and plucky insouciance at the 24th World Petroleum Congress in Calgary this month... This skips over the awkward detail that EVs are already on track to reach 60pc of total car sales in the world's biggest car market within two years (not a misprint). The cartel is being hit from two sides. Petrol and diesel cars are becoming more efficient, gradually displacing 1.4bn vintage models disappearing into the scrap yard. BP says that alone will cut up to a tenth global oil demand by 2040. With a lag, EVs are now starting to take a material bite, with an S-curve trajectory likely to go parabolic this decade.
China's EVs sales hit 38pc this summer, even though subsidies have mostly been scrapped. This is far ahead of schedule under Beijing's New Energy Vehicle Industry Development Plan. China's Chebai think tank says the emerging consensus is that EV sales will hit 17m or 60pc of total Chinese share by 2025, rising to 90pc by 2030, assuming that the grid can keep up... Vietnam is a few years behind but with similar ambitions. Its EV start-up, VinFast Auto, became the world's third most valuable carmaker after it launched on Nasdaq last month, briefly worth as much as the German car industry before the share price came back down to earth...
OPEC's central premise has long been that the rise of a billion-strong middle class in emerging Asia will more than offset declining oil use in the OECD bloc. That notion is 'withering under scrutiny'... The International Energy Agency (IEA) says global oil demand will peak at 105.5m b/d in 2028 and then flatten for a few years before going into decline... The IEA pulls its punches. The Rocky Mountain Institute argues in its latest report — End of the ICE Age — that half of global car sales could be EVs by 2026, reaching 86pc later this decade.
The article closes by citing "the breathtaking pace of global electrification. The decline of oil in car and bus transport may be closer than almost anybody imagined. OPEC as we know it may be on the cusp of a death spiral."
clueless writer (Score:2, Informative)
Re:clueless writer (Score:5, Insightful)
Electricity is still pegged to crude/LNG/coal/diesel in many part of the world as well. Even outside of these regions electricity is pegged proportional to those prices, for simple reasons like backup generators.
But as long as you can burn something in a larger generator and get significantly more effectivity than burning it in a car, the demand for energy won't budge. And cars isn't boats, railways or tractors. Or petrochemicals. Or heating.
I simply don't have any faith in the global economy leaving the oil economy until we do.
Diesel (Score:2)
There's a huge headache looming for the whole world, not just OPEC. Diesel costs are largely subsidised by petrol sales. As that subsidy evaporates, the cost of diesel production is going to skyrocket. Long-haul in particular will suffer.
But maybe that's a good thing, ecologically at least.
Re:Diesel (Score:5, Insightful)
Rei gave 48.6% for road transport (vast majority of gasoline and a good chunk of diesel), I'm seeing ~46% for gasoline. [petroleums...ompany.com] 26% diesel and "other fuels". 9% Jet Fuel. 3% Asphalt, 1% Lubricants, 15% "Other". Just giving that so that so people have an idea.
Also figure that battery tech will "improve"* by 1-10% per year. I'd love to give a narrower range, but it isn't an even rate [energy.gov].
Same deal with solar/wind, but let's have that at 1%. [comparemysolar.co.uk]
So here's the way I see it playing out(all timelines are very vague, I don't have the industry knowledge to even guess when each step will happen):
As cars, well, "light vehicles" including SUVs and pickups trend EV, initially the price of gasoline will stabilize and drop. This is why I used to tell EV-phobes that the city people buying EVs is good for them - more gasoline for their use, at a lower price. The lower price will help keep gasoline vehicles around a little longer.
Eventually, though, you'll see less oil exploration(new wells), and refineries will shift away from producing as much gasoline as reasonable technology can support. This will increase the proportions of other products around that area of the stack.
But as you say, other parts of the stack are effectively subsidized by gasoline. So diesel goes up, Kerosene (jet fuel) goes up, everything else goes up. Hell, if asphalt prices increase, that means more concrete laid than it.**
So with lower production, and higher costs, I figure that you'll rapidly see other industries shifting away from it.
Diesel Trucking - They can shift to being EVs as well, starting with the short haul. For longer haul, BIG EV trucks and a shift to (hopefully fixed) railroads.
Railroads - fuel costs aren't as big of a deal for them, but they can shift electric as well.
Planes - we're seeing some short haul planes. They can also maybe shift to natural gas. Very long term, hydrogen.
Ships - Nuclear power, sails, Ammonia, etc...
Petrochemicals - Natural gas, green crude oil created by thermal depolymerization, etc...
All being caused by a gradual price increase eventually making the use not worth it for an industry.
*Improve meaning higher capacity, cheaper costs, faster charging, longer service life, etc...
**For driving purposes, concrete averages twice the life expectancy at twice the cost, so it all evens out. If you upset that balance...
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Concrete roads suck because of what happens when you don't maintain them with exquisite care, and what happens at the end of the lifecycle of the concrete slabs. Resurfacing is replacement. You can't just go over it with a little more concrete, and you can't just attach a thin layer of asphalt to it, you have to put a whole new road layer down.
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You talk about this as if it's going to be a gradual shift away from fossil fuels, but I don't think it's going to be, because we're dealing with corporations which are invested in making as much profit as possible. And they are giant conglomerates, with truly massive capital investments in places, all interconnected and dependent on consumer spending. Bankruptcies and mergers are going to drive a lot of chaos in the coming decades.
I've been saying for years now that I expect life to get rocky for ICE vehic
That is going to start changing very quickly (Score:3, Interesting)
There's other problems they have to worry about like how cars are rapidly be
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Or they're just going to go for "white hydrogen"
https://theconversation.com/ho... [theconversation.com]
Either way, that's less dependence on energy sources from outside the EU.
Re:That is going to start changing very quickly (Score:5, Insightful)
This is a really bad geopolitical analysis of what is going on. No idea how this gets modded as "Interesting". Or maybe because people wish it was true?
The entirety of Europe is going to rapidly move towards renewables now.
There were moving towards renewables before, and if you look at the actual growth, the acceleration is just natural. There is no "bump" due to Ukraine invasion.
Putin overestimated his importance to those Nations, they were buying the oil not because they desperately needed it to survive but because they were trying to create trade routes and dependencies inside the Russian economy so that Russia wouldn't do something dumb like invade another country and risk sanctions.
No, they were buying mainly gas, because gas is slightly cleaner than coal, and from what we see with countries that have a lot of solar/wind in Europe (Germany for instance), is that they need a shitload of gas to make up for solar/wind intermittency (in 2022, ~40% of Germany electricity generation came from gas/coal/lignite).
They were buying it from Russia because they were the closest ones able to provide them with the quantities needed, at a cheap price. When they couldn't/didn't want to buy from Russia anymore, they just turned to more expensive alternatives (like importing LNG by tankers from the US, which is just even more absurd in terms of efficiency/CO2 emissions).
There is also some amount of virtue signaling when Europe says they sanction Russia and don't buy their gas. It is just a game of musical chair: if you look at the trade volumes worldwide, you see that the amount of gas bought/used stayed almost the same since the war. The only thing that changed is who is buying from who. Because yes, countries desperatly need that gas to survive.
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There is no "bump" due to Ukraine invasion.
Development of major projects takes time. The Ukraine war isn't even 2 years in. There definitely is a "bump" due to the Ukraine invasion, but to see that bump you can't look at the energy mix, you need to look at investment and sanctioning of projects. The EU literally poured $300bn in funding into green energy as part of a direct response to the war in Ukraine on top of the already planned funding that was part of the national growth from previous green agendas. Those projects just haven't come online yet
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Of course they have been falling.
Take a fat guy weighing 400 pounds (~190 kilograms). If he reduces his burgers consumption by half, he may lose 30% weight. Which is a lot. But he is still weighing 280 pounds, which is still a lot, and still makes him a fat guy. And guess what: the first pounds are the easiest to lose, as can attest anyone who has been overweight and tried to make a real change.
This is the situation Germany is in nowadays: they reaped the early benefits of their renewables increase (500 bil
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Every statistic I've seen puts the percentage of oil used for transportation at about 60%. If that shifts to even 50%, it's going to cause a pretty massive shift in oil prices. Everyone knows this is coming, even in the Saudis, but they, like all the other oil producing jurisdictions, need to keep the illusion of perpetual and infinite growth in demand going as long as possible.
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Transportation includes a lot more than cars. Both numbers could be right.
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You think a 10% drop in overall global demand won't impact prices? Not even production cuts can long defy economic gravity. If the oil isn't needed because demand shifts to renewables, at some point production cuts literally replicate a loss of demand.
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Once some of the newer deeper wells are shut off it will take a lot of money to turn them back on.
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They probably won't shut them off. What they'll do is slow down production from them, making them last longer, and not drill new ones.
Oil wells only last 15-30 years, by a quick search. Another source says 20-40. Doesn't make much difference, still means that you have to keep drilling new wells to replace about 5% of your stock every year.
So if overall demand for gasoline and diesel drops 5% over the course of several years, they can meet that reduction by simply reducing how many new wells they drill.
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You think a 10% drop in overall global demand won't impact prices? Not even production cuts can long defy economic gravity. If the oil isn't needed because demand shifts to renewables, at some point production cuts literally replicate a loss of demand.
As a resident of a country that derives significant revenue from oil and gas production, I try to see the glass as half full. When oil prices are high, it costs more to fill my tank, but the economy writ large benefits. When prices are low, both government and producer revenue take a hit, but we all get to enjoy cheap gas.
Re: clueless writer (Score:2)
What you lose in oil to fuel you will make up for in oil to plastic. Plus you will still generate gasoline as a byproduct that needs to be disposed of. In the kerosine days, Standard Oil just dumped it in rivers. What do you think will happen today?
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Well, obviously most nations won't let them dump it into the water anymore.
But demand isn't going to go to zero anytime soon. After all, we're still selling gasoline cars. Hell, we were still selling leaded gasoline for car use a few years ago. It's still used for aviation, though the push is on to find something to replace 100LL.
Right now refineries use a lot of tricks to increase the production of gasoline, such as steam reformation.
So first they simply stop making more of it. This should make everyth
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Why would there be some significant increase in the demand for plastics?
Re:clueless writer (Score:5, Insightful)
A 10% global drop will result in a 10% drop in production, with prices staying the same. That is what OPEC does.
When you control what comes out and there is effectively zero competition, you can just reduce production and keep prices the same, if not higher, while still scoring favors that you have not done a complete embargo on your whim.
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There are lots of factors going on here, and you're way oversimplifying them. For starters, OPEC currently provides 40% of the world's oil and about 60% of the exported oil to the international market (https://www.eia.gov/finance/markets/crudeoil/supply-opec.php). So a 10% drop in overall oil demand and maintaining the price means they lose 25% of their revenue, given large fixed costs, that's a larger percentage drop in profits.
One thing worth noting: If there's a 40% drop in oil demand, it means OPEC co
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The Saudis do have some built-in advantages in that their light sweet crude is a helluva cheaper (read: less energy intensive) to process, so it's likely as oil demand drops they'll still be able to capitalize on a more economical oil to extract and refine. The losers in the medium term will be jurisdictions like Venezuela, Alberta and Russia with much "dirtier" reserves that require significantly more processing. They need reasonably high prices or some other other economic protection in a lower-demand wor
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That only goes so far. North American production is still online. Frackers are more than happy to supply the market so long as the price/barrel stays above $50.
Re:clueless writer (Score:5, Interesting)
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What they lose on oil sales they make up and more on stock market gains.
That's not how the stock market works. You can't just blindly short a stock, shorting involves an agreement with someone else to bet against you. Oil companies are big companies. Precisely zero people will bet against you when you come up with bets priced in such a high billion figure, especially knowing that you can influence the outcome.
You won't be able to play this game with enough money to drop a single small oil company let alone a significant portion of US oil.
If you're only source of income is oil (Score:5, Insightful)
Ever wonder why oil never seems to go much above $100 a barrel? Because that's the point where people start to seriously look for alternatives and a seriously cut back on usage. When that happens the Saudis among others quickly run out of money to buy the weapons they need and to maintain their military.
Never mind what having 1/3 or even just a bit less than 1/3 of your product sales go away would do to the price of your product when demand dropped by that much .
The Sardis know they're on borrowed time. That's why they've been going around buying up things with their oil money while they've still got it.
Re:If you're only source of income is oil (Score:4, Interesting)
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That's enough to cause unrest (Score:2)
Re:If you're only source of income is oil (Score:5, Insightful)
How do things like this get modded up. This is pure fantasy land, no one on your list of countries that would supposedly be fine with India doing this would be happy to see one country dominate oil production like this. Plus, India already has problems with Islamic militancy, can you imagine what their problems would be like if they took over the entire middle east?
I mean, what are you even basing this middle eastern fear of India on? Let's see some citations by some geopolitical experts.
Saudia Arabia isn't a democracy (Score:2)
Oil doesn't go over $100 bucks because demand craters when it does. There is a *lot* of discretionary use of oil in the world. Stuff people can live without. Maybe not comfortably, but they'll live.
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Oil prices are set by the last barrel pumped.
If you don't have to pump a barrel at $115, then the price doesn't get that high.
Oil is also used for lubricants (which EV need less of), fertilizers, and plastics. It's also used for a lot of chemical products.
But cutting oil production by 33% would absolutely destroy the price of oil while also not helping keep gasoline prices low. As gasoline cars become less common, they lose their network effect.
You can already see that as gasoline cars have gotten more
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The price of ICE vehicles isn't really moving that much. You can get base models of cheaper cars from major automakers for around $20-$23k even today. And some of those vehicles are very nice. Plenty of pickup, decent interior space, decent amenities. Some of them even have amazing fuel economy which can save you even more money if you hang on to it for awhile.
People see rising averages on ICE prices in the US at least due to consumer behavior. We Americans spend $50k on average for ICE vehicles becaus
Re:clueless writer (Score:5, Informative)
No, This [statista.com].
Road transport is nearly half (48,6%). Rail (mostly electrifiable is 1,8%. Electricity generation (on a long-running downtrend) is 3%. Shipping (partly electrifiable with current tech) is 3,6%. Aviation (same) is 4,4%. Residential / commercial / agricultural (mostly electrifiable) is 9,8%. "Other industry" (broad category, 12,6%) is probably a mix of displaceable and non-displaceable. Only "Petrochemicals" (16,2%) is unlikely to be displaced to any meaningful degree.
E.g., something like 75% will be replaced by current electrification trends without any further advances in technology, and significantly more as technology continues to advance.
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A good few of the "petrochemicals" could be replaced by organic stuff, like plastics.
Worst case, you thermal depolymerize stuff for that.
It's just that the oil way to do it is 1/10th of a cent cheaper per pound or such.
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"Road Transport" takes in more than "cars". Consumer vehicles make up a little more than half of that, with commercial transport making up the bulk of the rest (2 and 3 wheelers make up a tiny slice as well, more than I'd figured actually). So yes, "cars" does make up less than 1/3rd, just barely.
Using EV for commercial transport would be a big help, but what would make the biggest difference would be if they didn;t keep expanding their fleets over the next 20 years.
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"No, This [statista.com].
Road transport is nearly half (48,6%)"
Which breaks down further to this [energy.gov]
For the USA, motorbikes, car, light truck & vans COMBINED travel only about as many miles as garbage trucks.
And when you add up miles traveled by school buses, delivery trucks, paratransit shuttles, transit buses & finally the monster category of Class 8 vehicles, those 1st three are only about 12% of total miles traveled.
And since those other vehicles are much heavier & far less efficient, the fuel
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*Facepalm*
That's miles per vehicle, not total miles per category.
Do you really think US roads are dominated by garbage trucks? Is that what you see when you look out your window?
High miles per vehicle improves EV economics.
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>High miles per vehicle improves EV economics.
Specially for things like those garbage trucks, that still travel a limited number of miles in a day each thus do not need such a huge battery compared to their size.
Low mile, but in use frequently is the best use case for an electric vehicle specially built for such use.
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And?
They are not. As a percentage they're lower, but they're growing in percentage terms vastly faster than cars, and should follow the car curve just a few years behind. Buses are basically tracking the car curve.
And?
Is the concept of building larger vehicles alien to you? You do realize that building bigger makes the task easier
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You're very wrong about this.
The electrification of heavier vehicles will happen far more slowly without massive subsidies.
And don't expect Elon to save us in this regard.
Not only did it take FIVE years to make a handful of Semis, but almost a year after the delivery event, the unit cost is still not known.
And that's a very big problem as the long range version likely uses an 800 kWh battery pack so about 10x that of a Model 3.
If Elon going to sell a Semi for what - $200k?? - when the same number of cells w
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It's like you did not read a single word.
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As for "making vehicles as fast as they can sell them" - it's not about status quo but scaling. This industry grows at tremendous rates. Model 3 and Model Y don't need much scaling to meet their market niches, so they're no longer constraints - they still need to scale, but nowhere near 50% YoY, so their scaling rates are easily managed now, with resources to spare. The main volume scaling needs to come from the new low-end platform, but that won't be out until the new Mexico factory is online, and it's
Re: clueless writer (Score:2)
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"Tesla isn't the only one on working on electrified trucks, DAF, Volvo, MAN, scania and other major truck brands already have and sell them"
BYD was 1st IIRC with a short-range Class 8 and that was perhaps 12-15 months after the Tesla Semi reveal event in 2017
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Tesla's semi just drove 1000 miles in one day.
Seems to me that the tech is now where they need it to be. Now it's just a matter of increasing the volume and making the build process more efficient to drive down the cost.
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Tesla's semi just drove 1000 miles in one day.
Somehow I doubt very much it was running at the 43 tonnes our fleet does every day.
Re:clueless writer (Score:5, Informative)
Fewer, larger parts are, as a general rule, easier to produce in industry than the same mass of more, smaller parts. Larger vehicles tend to have better CdA-to-mass ratios than smaller vehicles. They tend to drive on lower rolling resistance tyres. They're mandated to take stops of at least specified lengths (in the EU, really bloody long, frequent ones).
Actual lorry driver here. The weight penalty means we'd have to increase the size of our fleet by 20% to carry the same tonnage because we gross out before we cube out. That's at a time where there's currently a shortage of 80,000 lorry drivers in my country. The breaks we need to take during driving are 45 minutes per 4.5hrs. The lorries in our fleet are double shifted so they run day and night. To give you an idea of the kind of mileage we do our 2018 fleet which is coming up to 5 years old has typically 1.2-1.3 million km on per unit. And whilst yes we have to have a daily rest period of 11hrs which may be reduced to 9hrs three times a week often the night driver is getting in the unit within 10-15 minutes of the day driver parking it up and vice versa, at best it may be stood a couple of hours between shifts.
I personally drive between 500-700km a day. Current range they have means they'd need to be recharged mid-shift and we'd only have a 45 minute break to do that. And it would need to be done at a charge rate, >100kWh, that is almost non-existent in this country. Not only that it would need to be done in a location where there's likely to be lots of other lorries also needing to do a recharge.
I hope so. (Score:2)
How electricity is produced? (Score:2)
Re:How electricity is produced? (Score:4, Informative)
In many countries, electricity is produced by burning fossil fuels.
True, but less fossil fuel is used if the electricity is used to power an EV than burned in an ICE vehicle.
Re:How electricity is produced? (Score:5, Informative)
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While true, power plants are vastly more efficient then cars, it's just basic physics. The transmissions losses of an electrical grid are nothing compared to the losses of burning fuel to get it to the gas, the fuel you burn to get to the gas station, and finally the straight up losses of burning fuel period.
Moreover, cars cannot run on hydropower, wind, biomass, nuclear, or even coal it we go that way. Electricity generation can, and there is a lot of more coal in the ground than oil.
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As much as I'd wish (Score:2)
Not gonna happen.
Yes, fuel is a considerable part of the petrochem industry, but it's only a part. Look around you, count the plastic items that litter your room and realize that whether you fuel your car with gas instead of electricity doesn't make or break OPEC.
OPEC is a cartel with price fixing. (Score:3)
Until it is time to replace my AC, upgrading to a heat pump to drastically reduce the use of my oil furnace will have to wait. My hybrid car now uses about 1/4 of my personal oil consumption, that furnace in winter is the other 3/4.
Only 10 years ago I was using at least twice that oil because the car was a 70s era v8 which used 3x the gas and the house used twice the oil before being remodeled up to modern insulation/fenestration codes, new windows, and a new furnace. The new furnace had little to do with the reduction, it was the old poorly insulated home itself.
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Having said that, I think OPEC is doing it wrong. There is another option for a large portion of their customers: electric. Maybe not for ships and aircrafts yet, as well as plastics, but those may come
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loss of some amount of demand (Score:2)
Many of the comments here think that fossil fuel demand is an all-or-nothing proposition But seems to me that a reduction in transportation fuels would significantly impact OPEC's -influence-. Supply from non-OPEC sources would be more likely to meet the reduced demand.
US fracking among others can surge when the price is right to fill decreased OPEC supply, particularly if the OPEC -control- starts to fracture.
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No (Score:2)
Because renewables require immense amounts of petrochemicals as inputs. Not to mention the fuel required to mine and transport the minerals for making batteries etc.
Yes (Score:2)
"We have taken into account all possible criteria such as the amount of CO2 emitted when electricity is produced or fuel is burnt, as well as the carbon impact of resource extraction for batteries or of building a power plant.
"We find out that electric cars in Europe emit, on average, more than 3 times less CO2 than equivalent petrol cars. In the worst case scenario, an electric car with a battery produced in China and driven in Poland still emits 37% less CO2 than petrol. And in the best case scenario, an
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In other news:
- with as many ICE as there are today on the road, we are sure to hit catastrophic levels of climate change.
- with as many EVs as there are ICE today (if you could magically replace all of them overnight), we are also sure to hit catastrophic levels of climate change
People don't get that, which is really simple math.
3 times less CO2 emissions for EV compared to ICE is nothing. This is not even an order of magnitude. Plus EVs put strain on other resources (lithium, rare earths, cobalt...). Ther
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I don't disagree with you. You make some excellent points. I was simply correcting some obvious BS from the commenter above, and nuance didn't seem to be called for.
Other resources (Score:2)
Strains on these resources are not consequential drivers of climate change, however, and so should not be a significant consideration when working to decrease that threat. Alternatives are also beginning to be developed for all of those; some may reach widespread enough implementation to become significant factors.
For those posts that say, in essence, "OPEC can just increase prices as power production (including transport there) demand
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Strains on these resources are not consequential drivers of climate change, however, and so should not be a significant consideration when working to decrease that threat
On the contrary. They should be significant consideration on those strains when working to decrease the threat of climate change, because that means if the "strain" becomes a "roadbloack" (either not enough, or not enough fast enough, or requiring too much energy to extract/refine...) to fight climate change, then it becomes an issue.
Same as how we so far demonstrated that we could produce and install a lot of solar/wind by using a lot of fossil fuels (solar panels from China, wind turbines mainly from Chin
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God damned Arabs... (Score:2)
I don't give a rat's ass about the fate of the oil-dependent Arabs or for that matter the non-Arab Iranians. They are all a bunch of seriously repressive regimes who deserve to die a hideous death. What happens to the people who live under those regimes is a different matter, however. But I'm not going to lose too much sleep weeping over their fate because the prediction that OPEC is doomed is wrong.
How many countries in the developing world actually, or will ever have, the electrical infrastructure to s
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Really? Like South Africa, probably the most advanced country economically in Africa that has a woefully inadequate and aging electrical infrastructure due to lack of investment in it by the government? It's had persistent blackouts [wikipedia.org] for twenty years. You are a fool, you know.
EVs aren't likely to send anyone into death spiral (Score:3)
If there is a shortage for petroleum in the USA then we can expect a number fo changes to keep the national economy moving.
First thing is to make up for the demand. That would mean opening up the strategics petroleum reserves. Any known spot on Earth capable of producing crude will be opened. It might take 5 years for these wells to produce any crude but if this crisis tlasts that long then the opening of new production should bring it to an end.
Then is supply. The US federal government has a large number of ships under construction now tat can be fitted with nuclear propulsion. Each ship can be equpped with the ability to produce jet fuel at sea for fueling up the aircraft it carries, and or smaller rescue and scout boats. The traditiona; "oiler" supply ship could be optimized for fuel synthesis on the move while also bringing mail, ammunition, food, and other consumable items onboard.
The US Coast Guard would act similarly with the large nuclear powered ice breakers being in the center of a flotilla where the smaller ships would be a mix of conventional and nuclear powered. Those needing fuel from the ice beaker or an oiler can take on such fuel at sea.
Air Force, Space Force, Army, Navy land forces, and Marines will have access to fuel available on land but if there's any shortages then exect them to use the same fuel syntheses as that used at sea. The power comes from nuclear fission power plants and the raw material comes from the sea.
What it comes down to is the military is capable of seeing to is own on short notice. Most everything in the inventory will move. What they do is a lot of guess work. If the matter is a bunch of oil wells set ablaze then this looks like something we've seen before. We put out the fire. We patrol for EIDs. We build pipelines to get the fuel to where it is needed for refining. One refined then maybe we can get some peasce.
We are seeing Saudis Arabia and UAE trying to distance themselves from the volatilize energy fossilize fuel bring by building nuclear power plants. With more electricity from nuclear fission domesticaly that means more money coming tin from exports. It make perfect sense.
I believe every nation should follow this lead. use income from fossil fuel exports to fund domestic nuclear fission. With Nuclear fission i place that opens up the possibility to synthesizes hydrocarbons, desalinate water, develope directed energy weapons, and more.
If the world wants to create some kind of petrolueum death priral then I suggest leaving the USA out of it. The USA has plenty of options to avoid the worst of it.
BTW, there's a German "anti-OPEC" film... (Score:2)
...with David Hasselhoff. It's not good and full of bad stereotypes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
In it, an inventor (played by Hasselhoff) invents a special pill that turns water into petrol. A sheik wants to investigate into that in order to buy that invention of the market. A woman from the Shell company also wants to look into it.
We can only hope so! (Score:2)
We can only hope so!
universal answer (Score:2)
No. Dream on.
So we don't need plastics any more? (Score:2)
Also, this argument assumes 100% electrification. You can electrify every car on the plane
How long, is a very. (Score:2)
You forgot what's at the top of that list:
0. Planet - the source. For every drop of it. Ultimately defines how long a 'very' is no matter what politicians sell you.
Guess we better start putting those mini and micro nuclear reactor permit requests in now, since they take a lot of oil to build, including 30 years of petroleum-based red tape.
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IRL they aren't as biodegradable as the typical claims,
Insulate wire with bio-plastics in a habitat with rats. Then come back and we'll talk.
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Non fuel/heat uses for fossil fuels is 10% of every barrel and of that 4% is plastics.
We are not going to stop producing lubricants and plastics, ever, and the suggestion that anyone is advocating for that that is silly.
Oil is such a useful material it's practically miraculous and the fact we use 90% of just to "make thing hot" is kindof tragic. Those are the uses we should focus on replacing.
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Re: Oil requirements (Score:2)
Make food containers, medical supplies, windmill blades, and PPE out of biodegradable plastics. See how that turns out.
Re:Real reason for OPEC cuts (Score:5, Informative)
Biden has drained our strategic reserve in order to hold down prices. This was done to prop up his poll numbers.
Well... There's also countering the effects of Russia's war with Ukraine. The article below, from June 2023, has more details, but oil has been drawn down during both the Trump and Biden administrations -- a lot of that is due to Congress, who also controls when it gets replenished. In short, Trump didn't fill it up and Biden hasn't drained it dry.
Fact check: Trump boasts about a massive oil purchase that never happened [cnn.com]:
The reserve got emptier under Trump
Trump claimed last year that he got the reserve to “100% full.” On Fox on Thursday, Trump said, “You know, we had the strategic national reserves almost full. And then Biden came along and took it to keep prices down – and it’s called artificially down.”
But Trump did not actually fill up the reserve. In fact, the reserve, which has an authorized storage capacity of 714 million barrels of oil, contained fewer barrels when Trump left office in early 2021 (about 638 million) than when [Trump] took office in early 2017 (about 695 million).
That’s in large part because of oil sales that Congress had mandated by law. But nonetheless, Trump’s claims about how he “filled up” the reserve are meritless.
The reserve isn’t close to ‘empty’
Trump also claimed on Fox that, as a result of Biden’s sales from the reserve, “the thing is almost empty now” and that “it’s totally empty.” He added, “It’s the emptiest I think it’s been in 50 years.”
There is a kernel of truth here. The reserve now contains fewer barrels of crude oil – about 355.4 million as of late May – than it had since 1983, so it’s at a 40-year low (though not a 50-year low). But “there’s months of supply in there still; it’s not empty, it’s not even close to being empty,” said Jim Krane, an energy research fellow at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy.
The US strategic reserve remains the world’s largest even after Biden drew it down. Krane said Trump’s claim is “definitely exaggerating the level of the contents of the SPR; it’s underplaying it. There’s a lot more oil in there than President Trump is letting on.”
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Ya, well, the former alleged president is above bullshit in the same sense as a brick is above the Sargasso Sea (to reuse a Douglas Adams phrase).
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Too bad for him it didn't work.
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It's for wartime, hence the name "Strategic Oil Reserve".
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^ ^ THIS ^ ^
Intentionally reducing production in this case is intended to introduce "artificial scarcity" in order to keep prices high.
Now ask yourself why do these oil exporting countries want to keep prices high?
Russia brings in more currency that it can then convert into imported "sanctioned" (yeah right!) goods that become weapons.
Saudi Arabia wants to build it's own nuclear reactors and will probably fund that project with currency from oil exports.
All of OPEC has pockets that need constant relining
Re:bullshit article (Score:5, Insightful)
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The number of products that come from a barrel of oil are mind-boggling.
I believe there is a new medication that can treat that, also made in part from oil.
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The number of products that come from a barrel of oil are mind-boggling.
I believe there is a new medication that can treat that, also made in part from oil.
"We are an unstoppable oil-dependency breaking machine!!!
Unfortunately, the machine runs on oil" - Jon Stewart
Re:bullshit article (Score:5, Informative)
The number of products that come from a barrel of oil are mind-boggling.
True, but the overwhelmingly largest amount of oil goes to fuel: it gets burned.
All of the other uses contribute pennies on the dollar.
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All of the other uses contribute pennies on the dollar.
I wonder how many pennies it's going to take to make all of those other 'uses' once demand drops low enough for a collusive industry to charge more than $100/gallon?
Love how we pretend their reaction will be anything but.
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Opec nations aren't the only oil producers on the planet though. Once oil production drops low enough other non opec countries will be able to handle enough of the demand that opecs control on prices will disappear.
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Oops production = consumption
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Up to about 22% of oil production goes to the really difficult to replace things, like plastics and lubricants. About 75% of oil production goes to fuels of various forms. Source: Page 3 of this document gives a good breakdown of the uses of a barrel of oil. [uwsp.edu]
The easy to switch oil uses are:
1. Small Vehicles - switch to EVs. With the smaller vehicles being easiest to switch.
2. Diesel Electrical Generation - Solar is becoming cheaper than coal for electrical power production, and oil is much more expensi
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What might be a thought is to focus on longevity of vehicles. Yes, a smaller, more efficient car will save fuel... but one might be far better off with a car that might not be as honed, but is easily maintained and can easily run 20 years and a ton of miles/kilometers. Not just the oil needed for the new car's plastics and fluids, but the energy needed for the engine and other components. Having vehicles that are simple and easy to service would go a long way into curbing the need for oil. Since electro
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True, but the overwhelmingly largest amount of oil goes to fuel: it gets burned.
But not all gets burnt in your little Ford. Less than half of oil gets burnt in transportation. Less than half of what is used in transportation is used by consumers for personal vehicles. EVs will have a big impact, but they won't eliminate the oil industry.
Re: bullshit article (Score:2)
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No they aren't. We currently have neither a pathway nor a legislative framework to address those other sources within the next 50 years. It's being worked on, and maybe the governments will put pressure on doing something about them, but right now they are going after consumer vehicles only and the industry is almost exclusively focused on consumer vehicles.
Where alternatives are being investigated they are currently borderline pilot plant stage without any path to scale up, and already the entire industry