This Is How Big Oil Will Die

Exactly. Specifically mentioned as the article is largely US focused, such as discussion of Keystone XL. Furthermore, although we may not be first, worldwide trends will largely lag the US.

 

Most likely not gonna happen until batteries become the structure, otherwise it is flying a fully loaded aircraft throughout the whole flight and landing which is... sub-optimal.

Definitely. Continue with the diesel/electric hybridization of the freight train industry, that would be great. Continue the full electrification of public transport trains, it will get there. Freight makes up the majority, and I doubt they will become fully electric anytime soon, but a hybridized train is pretty good savings and the engineers like 'em too.

Yep, that'll come pretty soon. Tesla's being the most famous but useless for long haul. But I do see hybridization of big semis which should allow huge efficiency increases. My guess is we will see some max load rules relaxed in the future for BEV semis and the container trailer part will just be a giant battery pack along with the tractor itself most likely with a "range extender" diesel under the hood. Long range trucking is an easy to define use case for truckers because they have limited hours they are allowed to operate which means guaranteed parking times. They just need enough range to get from A to B in all weather and all terrain with 1million miles of degradation factored in without needing charging stops. Perhaps the rules will also relax so that fueling and charging don't count towards operating hours. Then it can truly be charged at a rest stop without issue as the driver sleep. Of course always corner cases it won't work for, like trucking duos that switch on/off with their logs so the truck doesn't stop, but the majority of truckers are solo enough it should make a huge dent. I expect to see many more axles on trailers in the future to support the big 'ol batteries.

Also yes. Getting there already. China just released (late last year) a 2.4MWh ship



But container ships, and ship in general, are prime contenders for nuclear power and full automation. There is no reason why a person needs to be onboard a ship that can be steered/powered/monitored from anywhere in the world. With "unlimited" fission fuel, weather can be predicted and routed around, supply ships just go from port to port. Like a giant bank vacuum tube system across the oceans. Operators on each end at the ports, ghost ships otherwise.

We'll get there, but it will take a lot longer

 

Concur somewhat with the strong exception of nuke container vessels being autonomous, and I say this from the standpoint of having literally HEARD the sound of an anti-collision radar from a semi-autonomous ULCC that did not detect me.

Autonomous shipping I'm semi-OK with once remote sensing and on-board sensors scale up a bit (meaning: LOT) more, otherwise "dead zones" will take on a whole new meaning.
Oceans are fairly big, and sensors are not infallible.
This is OK if you're talking about a Tesla swapping paint with another car.
Less OK if you're talking about a Panamax ship knocking down 24 knots in open ocean or slower through some interesting choke points.

Presently....I will NEVER be OK with anything terrestrial, nuclear, and autonomous.
That's one of @bwilson4web's "pick any two" things.

 

Wishful thinking.
One factor commonly dismissed is growth of world/US population, and growth of 3rd world economies.
Despite record levels of renewables, petroleum use is also at record levels.
We need renewables just to keep up.

Electric vehicles have serious practical issues as far as displacing petroleum. A tank of gasoline contains an enormous amount of energy, and is very clean burning in a Prius. If you are going to replace that with batteries, you need a small power plant to charge up each car. I am sure we are heading to EV mandates and large incentives, to try to prop up the EV market, just like we prop up ethanol market with gov't mandates. Admittedly it is hard to be Big Oil when gov'ts take your markets away, but they know that is fair game and will deal with it by downsizing or whatever.

 

First graphic here:

World energy consumption - Wikipedia

Fossils not dead yet. Mix is being optimized (in a way) to reduce pollution externalities.

 

agreed, it has 7 more years.

 

I agree, unless something precipitous occurs.
It’s actually good for all oil/ related companies that they will not simply go out of business, good for the country also. No complete market disruption for example. Should Science find a way to propel all cars, trucks etc for
a penny a mile, guess what kind of fuel we’d be using. Whatever happened to that Gentleman that discovered
how to run a car on fumes? it’s suspected he was murdered! That was the big opportunity for Oil use to continue thruout eternity ......................if factual, well never know.

Taking bets on that?

 

on what?

 

OK I'm really not trying to hijack the thread, but why don't we have electric container ships now?

A lot of ocean freighters burn nasty stuff like bunker fuel. The leftover tarry mung you get when you've removed all the nice light oils from crude. It's very cheap, the oil companies are generally eager to get rid of it. The emissions from a ship using that stuff are particularly nasty, but since they're mostly out in the open ocean nobody cares.

 

If the Govt issues me a tanker I’ll be glad to only buy the clean stuff, but you have a great point there pardner

 

Secondary batteries have <1/1000 energy density of even gooey hydrocarbons. Ships at sea gotta get somewhere and at low cost.

If my number is 'off', someone here is likely to fix it.

Sea-faring has had 3 stages:
We can't do that!
We don't know where we are!
Reduce our transit costs.

 

Actually somebody did care..so not much longer, if I understand. I believe last 10-15 years there has been quite strict new regulations requiring ocean vessels to use low sulfur diesel or install scrubbers. I am not sure the exact status, but the bunker fuel days are coming to an end, I am thinking. I was always amazed ships could run on that stuff, but typically they had to switch to clean diesel as they came into port, is my understanding....never actually rode on an ocean ship myself.

Tighter marine fuel sulfur limits will spark changes by both refiners and vessel operators - Today in Energy - U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA)

 

There's a simple formula to explain the downfall of oil.

J.B. Straubel is the Chief Technical Officer at Tesla--he's been with them since the beginning. He came up with a battery law: that batteries will improve 6 to 8% every year. He recently said that this has been accurate for the entire run of Tesla so far. That seems very small--nothing like Moore's law for CPUs where they doubled in complexity every year.

But it is compounding, and therefore exponential. Do a simple spreadsheet. Enter the driving range of a Bolt: 238 miles. Now make the next cell down equal to 1.06 times that number. Now repeat this for about 20 rows.

In 9 years the number is over 400 miles. Alternately, a 200 mile battery will cost half as much in 9 years. Since the battery is a large part of the cost of the Bolt, that means that a 200 mile range electric car will be very cheap.

And that's at 6%. Considering all the research that is now pouring into batteries, I'll bet the increases will be closer to 8%. Then it is only 7 years to double the battery capacity.

Now imagine that the cheapest car you can buy, gas or electric, is an electric car that can drive 200 miles. Cheapest! Of course it is also cheapest to run by far. Guess what will happen to gasoline car sales?

 

US and Euro personal-transportation markets may be looking for Tesla and Tesla-like and Prius-like posh vehicles. Future fleet growth there is whatever it may be, but I guess it will be small.

Others in Asia and Africa may be looking for lower-cost options fulfilling their 'missions'. Whether those will be pure electric, or electric assisting fossil, or pure fossil, remains to be seen. Future fleet growth there could be a lot. No American company seems to have a foot in. Watch BYD and Mahindra, at least.

If Toyota (famous for Prius) chooses not to chase bottom of this market, it would be their choice.

 

Never been on one myself either, but I have been to a few beach communities that were far enough from a given port that the ships had switched off the clean fuel and fired up the bad stuff. Frankly amazing how much smoke and smell you can get out of a single ship that isn't in distress.

I read somewhere that you only need 17 of those ships to equal the air pollution contribution of every wheeled vehicle on the planet. There are way more than 17.

The flip side: if they can't burn it in a marine engine, how do they get rid of it? It's essentially a waste product of the petroleum business. They're going to keep creating it in proportion to the other products they sell, because that's how it works- they get that sludge as a leftover no matter what. I guess I expect it would do best in a hazardous waste incinerator, maybe hot enough to recover some energy?

Agreed- need some options friendly to the used 2-stroke motorcycle budget.

And in many places, there's still a lot of work to do to make and distribute the electricity, or this is going to turn into walled off parking lots that have their own diesel genny- difficult to expand, yet something to compete with.

 

Range anxiety.

In a shrinking world, oceans are still pretty big.
If you put enough batteries in the hull to cross the pond, then there's not much room left for cargo.
NOW.....
If you want to go all 'old school' I suppose that one could use sails and solar, but neither really scales up for use on an adult-sized ship.

Shipping runs on raaazor thin profit margins.
Thank you globalization!
Hulls that burn bunker fuel are being rapidly supplanted by diesel, and as pointed out above nucular power would be very VERY efficient if it weren't for all of the paperwork.....which is why the US tried and failed to do commercial nuke in the 60's (NS Savannah.)
The CHICOMS can make it work if anybody can....and I wish them well!

You can use solar to offset some of the hotel loads, but I can tell you that it's not quite cost efficient enough to do at present for the very reason that it's not being DONE yet.
Ships builders are NOT afraid to spend big money to make big money, which is why I would not be surprised to learn that shipyards are back-fitting hulls with solar panels, but this would represent AT the the very most nothing more than a reduction in the hotel loads (electrical, potty water, A/C, etc...)

 

Why is it that people think they are lied to, when someone or even a group of someone's are wrong?
Is the author of that paper "lying" if he is incorrect, or simply wrong?

 

If we could somehow put the brakes on the population explosion, and lower lifestyle expectations.

 

Everything has a good use when it comes to petroleum.
Bunker Fuel is the proverbial bottom of the barrel, also can be used for road asphalt, which is a nifty form of carbon sequestration.
But most commonly in the USA it goes to "cokers" which convert to gasoline and diesel and coke (a coal-like by product). A regulatory change such as this implies billions of dollars of investment to the refineries to construct new "cokers" etc, which I think has been happening over the last 10-years in preparation for the spec change. USA I don't think we make too much bunker so I think this is overseas refineries impacted most.

 

The third stage of @tochatihu includes getting there fast. For ocean going ships, electric isn't up to the task. Need too many batteries, or you are going too slow depending on solar.

I have seen proposals of using giant kites to give ships a 'push' when the wind is blowing the right way. At least one ship has been built with metal sails. The engines are already efficient; 50% beats the Prius' 40%.

I recently read 18 months until the implementation. It could mean increased fuel prices on land.

Coal might make a come back. Powderized and cleaned, it could work as a fuel in these huge engines. Diesel's demo engine ran on coal dust.

A few years ago, my work place switched to #2 from #6 for the boilers. #6 is essentially the same as the heavy fuel oil used by these ships. It needs to be heated in order to flow.

Coke is needed to make steel. Without carbon, it is just iron.