The Illusion of Vast Undeveloped U.S. Oil Resources

The claim of vast US reserves just waiting to be exploited offshore is really just an illusion. Sort of like financing your retirement on coins that have fallen between the cushions of your couch. From ASPO:

The Illusion of Vast Undeveloped U.S. Oil Resources

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The elemental insanity of carbon sequestration

The periodic table of the elements, devised by Mendeleev in 1870, is one of the most dangerous things ever created. It seemingly awakens us to a world of chemical possibilities, but it misleads us into believing that the world actually provides us with these things as starting materials. The most obvious problem, of course, is that is gives equal visual weight to atoms with vastly different relative abundances. Thus, we could try scaling by that. But that seems hard to get right as well. But my current beef is that, except for a few inert and/or shiny things, nothing is available in elemental form. Which leads into an analysis of this fake news: Scientists find way to make mineral which can remove CO2 from atmosphere ******snip*** Scientists have found a rapid way of producing magnesite, a mineral which stores carbon dioxide. If this can be developed to an industrial scale, it opens the door to removing CO 2 from the...

Hells Bells! Shell Sells Wells!

So why does an oil industry major sell working gas wells? Shell Plans to Sell Stake in Eagle Ford Shale - WSJ The explanation tossed out is that Shell and other majors came late into the game, overpaying for assets. Okay. This would explain a decision to sell acreage. But selling working wells indicates that the money flowing from these wells is not good enough to make owing them worthwhile for Shell. (Indeed, the original WSJ report reported "the assets weren’t meeting the company’s profit targets") Can the smaller buyer (with less overhead, perhaps) can deal with a lower margin? We'll see. A month ago, after reports of write downs of shale assets by many companies, it was suggested that The companies are turning instead to developing current projects, unable to justify buying more property while fields bought during the 2009-2012 flurry remain below their purchase price, according to analysts. As Fadel Gheit, an analyst at Oppenheimer & Co. Inc. was quot...

A Horse in the Sun

Horsepower (hp) is a unit of (naturally) power, or energy delivered per unit time. It is most commonly used to rate the power delivered by internal combustion engines (automobiles, lawn mowers). For a precise definition and history of this unit, this entry in Wikipedia is a good read. There is some variability in the precise conversion between horsepower and other units, but it is approximately equal to 745 watts. I find this value rather interesting, as this is roughly the incident power delivered, per square meter, of radiation from the sun -- and also roughly the area available on a horse for collecting said power. And of course, harvesting that power is a rather inefficient process -- about 10-20% for solar cells. Something to think about when you see an automobile rated at 200 hp: it would take 2000 square meters of (cheap) solar panels to deliver the equivalent power. That is nearly half of a football field. Try towing that behind your car. Sobering thought.

Picojoule

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