Oil prices climb to $101.11 a barrel...

Thanks for the link. I'm skeptical, for the reasons mentioned. This quote also raises my eyebrows:

"In the tests to date, one ton of seaweed has been processed per day, allowing the collection of 20 kiloliters of methane gas. In order to boost efficiency, this is blended with natural gas and converted into 10 kilowatts of electricity per hour."

How much natural gas is added? What's the blend?

If we take the entire 10kWhr as due to the seaweed, that's $1.40 worth of electricity per ton. Seems like a pretty low yield, and one wonders whether more than that was spent processing the stuff. Grinding up, pumping, collecting...

Alas, there are no easy answers.

Cheers, James

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Not sure if these numbers are right, but from this website it looks like giant kelp is worth 5K to 8K BTU per pound, or maybe 2KwH which would be 28 cents. So, a ton of seeweed would be worth 2000 * 0.28 =3D $560 ???

"Examples of biomass that may prove to be optimum crops include land crops of Sudangrass, napiergrass, sorghum, sugarcane, and the unicellular algae Chlorella and Scenedesmus, and seawater crops of Macrocystis pyrifera (giant kelp).^Several of these crops could yield

20 to 30 tons of dry organic matter/acre/y, some others up to 60 tons/ acre/y.^These crops are estimated to range in fuel value from 5000 to 8000 Btu/dry lb "

-Bill

You have not talked with a sufficient quantity of motorcyclists. Over time i have rode units giving anywhere from 22 mpg to 85 mpg. My current ride gives about 32 to 35 mpg commuting, but it is overpowered and very quick and fun to ride. (110 HP on 800 Lbs curb, full tank.)

But those prices are not the news with which you can manipulate the sheeple.

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Is little baby upset that her US dollars do not buy the same amount of HK trash that they used to. Poseur. Impostor.

I drive a Jetta TDI, it gets over 50mpg on average driving. Since it runs diesel and prices have been so absurd, I have been in the process of building a small biodiesel refinery. It's a pretty simple solution and as I'm calculating it, parts should pay for themselves in about 6 months, after which I should be able to produce BD well under $2.00/gal easily.

I live in the US (go figure) where really only two manufacturers produce cars using this technology (no domestic producers). The country has made serious mistakes on their alternative fuel planning:

1. For instance, tax credits are given to those who drive hybrid cars WHICH still burn gas (or at best 85% ethanol), and are hardly as efficient on highways as their diesel competitors (which can run 100% biodiesel). No tax credits are given to those who drive TDI's which are more efficient outside of cities and can run on pure biodiesel.
2. Biodiesel is shown to produce cleaner emissions, with the exception of more NOx production (which by the way can be controlled due to the lack of sulfur in BD). Unlike ULSD diesel, BD protects the engine better. It also benefits farmers in the country and slows the the bleed that continues (and will continue) in the US economy due to its reliance on foreign exports. The only real downside with BD is that it does not have a high tolerance for extreme cold, but most of the country could still be shifted to it (the rest could have smaller amounts blended in).
3. Ethanol on the other hand has been shown to have a short shelf life, is extremely corrosive to many materials, and has poor efficiency. And yet the government mandates it get added to fuel to decrease efficiency some more and increase the demand for imports.
4. The EPA has made it nearly impossible to produce diesel engined cars in the US, rather then trying to mandate a shift to BD blends and encouraging the production of more efficient cars, it continues to block them out of the market citing emissions. Consider if a diesel car puts out 20% more emissions, but gets nearly 40% more fuel efficiency, isn't there actually a net loss of 20% emissions. No, the EPA has not planned a shift to an alternative fuel which works, it still is promoting ethanol, of which not much good is coming of it.

The net fact remains, aside from some mass transport vehicles and fortunate rural areas in the west, most of the US relies solely on petroleum imports, and with current government policy, that's not about to change.

Joe

For a great many drivers highway milage doesn't matter. Stop and go driving milage matters a lot for them since that is how the car is operated nearly 100% of the time.

For many people a plugin hybrid would be the best answer.

You can control NOx in with sulfur in the fuel. It isn't easy and it isn't cheap.

As soon as you start planting crops just to make biodiesel, its advantage is lost. Biodiesel from waste products adds value to the economy. Biodiesel from crops doesn't because it is all from seed oils which takes a lot of energy inputs to make.

Biodiesel also attacks many materials.

The oil within a vertically integrated company is worth as much as the price on the spot market because they have the option of refining it or selling it raw. The spot market is a good but nervous indicator of the price of oil. The long term contracts will all end some day and a new contract be written at the new higher price. The trend is smoothened by that effect but the average rate of increase is not reduced.

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The oil within a vertically integrated company is worth what it can be sold for. Introducing large stocks into the open market will reduce the spot price.

Long term contracts are set at a price point where both the buyer and seller think they will make money over the term of the contract.

I don't think it really would or at least not by very much. If a vertically integrated company sells its crude oil into the market, it won't be refining it into finished products and selling those. Others will be making that finished product from the crude oil instead. The net effect won't be anything like putting new oil from a well onto the market.

Yes and those predictions are based on the conditions at the time the contract is made. The next batch of contracts will be written in a very different environment.

Forest destruction is a one-time event for a given area. Having the land replace petroleum consumption with biomass burning will be replacement of ongoing carbon desequestration with neutral carbon impact.

Where do you get that? A steady-state forest has zero carbon impact both locally and globally - the biomass content in a natural forest is not steadily increasing long term, but constant on a long term. Cropland sequesters carbon locally and if the crop is eaten, burned, decomposed or any combination of these, has zero carbon impact globally.

That is a separate problem, to be solved by growing sustainable crops or growing crops where they can be sustained.

The USA has a fair amount of farmland that could not be sustained until crop rotation including legumes was implemented.

What about the schemes that produce more energy than consumed? They do exist and are used!

Impact on food prices is a remaining argument to consider. Meanwhile, corn is now $5.21-$5.28 a bushel, 9.3 to 9.4 cents per pound.

With petroleum costing about 30 cents per pound and having much more energy per unit weight than corn probably by a factor of more than 3.2 or so, I would go along with arguments against government mandates to get corn to get used that way unless there is a benefit, such a likelihood that biofuel ethanol will be cheaper (even per unit energy) than petroleum in the foreseeable future.

- Don Klipstein ( snipped-for-privacy@misty.com)

People who live in cities will benefit. But why have a car in the first place if you live in a major city? Why not use mass transit? I can tell you most of my driving is not constant stop and go, and I still live in the most densely populated state.

Yeah, which is why the government went hellbent on mandating ULSD so cheaper systems could be implemented.

It keeps the money in the country and benefits farmers, the negative side is it increases some crop prices. I don't see how planting more crops for biodiesel spells a loss, I think if anything it would create a new industry in the US. The country has plenty of farmland, it might even be able to export if it can build the facilities.

True about that, I forgot it myself :P

"Joe Kappus" skrev i en meddelelse news:B8GdnYzTpdo5q1fanZ2dnUVZ snipped-for-privacy@giganews.com...

No mistake here ;-0

Exactly - Governments are not about change, but about preventing any! Governments are society's parasites adopted perfectly to the prevailing system so change is very risky to them because it creates a window of opportunity for a *different* set of leeches.

I.O.W: Any energy scheme that reduces government income will not be supported in any way whatsoever and even sabotaged whenever possible. This applies in Denmark too!

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In many places, it is quicker to walk than take transit. If you need to carry packages etc, transit may not be an option at all.

The sulfur is its own problem. That rotten egg smell isn't just umpleasant.

Maybe not. If there is a free market in such things some countries nearer the tropics will have an advantage. Farmers rarely benefit from such things anyway. Folk like ADM get most of the benefit.

If it takes more energy to product the biodiesel than you can get out of it, you certainly have a loss. Short of that you can end up forcing crops into land that is less suited to its growth and where more inputs are needed to produce the same food. The result can be more total energy.

If you look at the really good farm land vs just the farm land, you will see that the US doesn't really have a huge amount. A lot of the farm land in the US requires significant inputs to produce a crop.

It is happening right now. The dumping of USD is what is driving the boom in commodities and gold: Chinese and Arabs discretely lightening up on the USD and buying "things of value".

The EUR is not safe a safe buy either because the ECB should have increased rates already and they haven't - people are betting that the ECB do not dare to let the Euro rise too much above the USD and will lower rates too possibly in June. If the ECB does the right thing by *not* cutting rates in June it is "all over" for the USD.

How long does "All over" last? This is mostly the usual market psychology positive feedback nonsense, stupid money following smart money. There's no fundamental reason for the Euro to keep climbing against the dollar. This is just a bit of noise and ringing in the system.

As far as I'm concerned, if a bunch of Arabs and Chinese enjoy buying dollars when they're high, and selling them when they're low, why should we interfere with their fun? We had similar fun with the Japanese a while back, selling them buildings and golf courses for gigabucks a pop and buying them back later for a fraction.

But should I raise my european pricing, and make more money now, or keep it the same and swipe market share, which might be better in the long term?

John

"John Larkin" skrev i en meddelelse news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com...

Forever - Until a new fiat currency is created, which will eventually implode too. Destruction through lack of confidence, fraud or oversupply of money is part of the natural life cycle of currencies.

Interest rates in EUR are higher than in USD. That's pretty fundamental. The EUR will climb to at least the level where one gets the same returns - and of course the EUR will continue higher as long as Bernanke is spamming the world with US paper.

Eventually even people as stupid and inbred as the Chinese central bankers and Arab "investors" obviously are will grow tired of that particular game ... and who will then be the buyer of US denominated paper? Anyone *more* stupid around?? Normally one runs out of stupid buyers on the end of an upcycle - doing it on the downswing is not so good.

Does any of all that matter if all you happen to "produce" is rebranded chink stuff and the Chinese decide to cut out the American middle man and get paid directly to EUR? The native US manufacturers, you might be among them, are doing Ok but they are too few to stem the bleeding!