Brewmaster

Neither do I. Granted, I'm all for better uses of land, more emphasis on transit, and stronger cities, but I just don't understand how people can cheer for high gas prices where the two aforementioned social classes are taking the highest hit. Change doesn't happen without a stimulus, which in this case, is high gas prices. I cheer high gas prices because I want things to change. I have no doubt that people will adapt (electric cars, telecommuting, rebuilding our communities, strengthening mass transit, etc...). I also have no doubts that some will be slow to adapt and feel some pain. That's life.

I know there are quite a few airline industry experts on these boards, so I'll just post my question here rather than starting a new thread... What are the odds that Cleveland gets direct flights to the Portland or Seattle anytime soon? You'd think that Continental would route some of their traffic from these cities though Cleveland, rather than Houston and Newark.

^ Thanks Hootenanny. Yes, I'm talking about gov't mandated energy efficiency programs. It was in response to Boreal's statement which blamed Washington for not forcing citizens to conserve energy (or perhaps forcing utilities to force citizens to conserve energy).

Absolutely. Efficiency is cheaper than fuel. Too bad no one in Washington gets this. Why must we rely on Washington to make our personal homes more energy efficient??? This should be something every American should be doing on their own! I would hope that people are smart enough to make their own decision based on their own unique circumstances. AMEN! We need to stop blaming the government for refusing to force us to make smart decisions. Energy efficiency only gets more profitable when bills go up. I spend $70/month on electric and gas combined (3 story condo, shared 16" thick brick walls, built in the 1870's). If that were to double or triple, I'd be motiviated to do something about it. Right now, I'm doing just fine, and I wouldn't appreciate my tax bill going to help an energy glutton change their habits. The gluttons should be motivated by the economics.

http://news.cincinnati.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080801/BIZ01/808010347/1076/NEWS http://blog.cleveland.com/business/2008/07/ohios_electric_utilities_seeki.html

Well gee...I hope we'll be ready to take the first step in 2014. This is embarassing.

Grilling Weiler could be a lot of fun. Talk about an obvious conflict of interest! Too bad that they charge admission to listen to people have a discussion.

At 5:30 tonight in Council Chambers (2nd floor hearing room), Councilwoman O'Shaughnessy will be hosting the 2nd of 4 public meetings about regional transportation goals and plans. Chester Jourdan of MORPC will be the main speaker. I also understand that an OSU professor with knowledge of Peak Oil will also be there. Sorry for the late notice!

I'm just not buying that people or animals have enough energy in their pee (the source of her urea) to run an electrolyzer and a car. I also wonder what the capital costs would be just to convert your transportation energy to run off of said pee. Lets pretend this gets commercialized. You've now got to buy a fuel cell car that only runs on ammonia ($$$$), an in-home electrolyzer (up front $$ and electricity to run it $$), separate your urine from the rest of your plumbing ($$$). You'd also have to drive around town in a car that could kill everyone within a two block radius if the anhydrous ammonia tank ruptures. I hate to be a naysayer because I love technological innovation, but this feels like one of those things that we'll look back on in 40 years with the same nostalgia that we do with the flying cars of the 1960's. Anaerobic digesters working off of poop and creating methane is a much more practical process.

Another shining example of how colleges can do completely impractical things just to get grant money and publicity. Ammonia comes from shifted natural gas in a capital and energy intensive process. Anhydrous ammonia is also pretty hazardous stuff...especially to be driving around with a pressurized tank full. If the benefit is that we have 3,000 miles of ammonia pipelines, then why not just skip the costly step where we turn natural gas into ammonia, and fill our cars with natrual gas. After all, we've got hundreds of thousands of miles of natural gas pipelines in this country...most of them lead right into people's homes!

Well...the Volt started out costing around $30k. Then it was revised to $30-40k. Now it looks like it's $48k. Any guesses on where it'll settle out? Nevermind, I'm sure my tax dollars will subsidize the hell out of it. I'm gonna say it'll cost $30k with subsidies, GM will make out like a bandit, and people will save their suburban lifestyles.

This is really crazy. At least O'Shaughnessy gets it. The rest are going to be answerable to the voters when we're staring at $6/gal gasoline.

Mexico is in some deep sh!t... http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/080421/mexico_oil_production.html We need to seal that border ASAP. Between the rising prices of corn and fuel, and now the falling revenue from their government's huge funding source, things are about to get ugly south of the border.

There's nothing but a big rubble-filled hole in the ground where the condemned Lazarus garage once sat.

See...I think these two fit perfectly into my theory. Nobody was ready for asian demand to take off. The Saudi's massively increased production in 2003-2004 when it did, which basically amounted to opening up the valves at existing fields and blowing their planned spare capacity. The rig counts match up perfectly with them developing new fields in the 2008-2012 time frame. They were caught with their pants down.

That blog editorial is pretty impressive. They took this quote... “The period of intense oil production growth is over” ...and turned it into an admission of Russian oil peaking. Could be true, but that's an awfully large jump to make based on that sentence.

That's about the most blatant attempt at vote buying I've ever seen.

This was exactly the point I was trying to make earlier...you can't have it both ways. Every time a new discovery is announced, peak oilers break it down to daily production rates and then poo poo it as being insignificant. On the flipside, a 500kbpd slip in production, temporary or permanent, is greeted with doomsday scenarios about the fall of the Saudi Oil Kingdom. You have to stay balanced to remain credible. The 35,000 foot view is...oil production took a huge jump in the first part of this century to keep up with rapidly growing Asian demand. This was immediately following a long period of very low prices, which gave oil producers little incentive to reinvest, as well as, little capital to spend. As a result, spare capacity was chewed up in a very short period of time, and the price shot up. $110/bbl oil has now provided oil producers with a renewed incentive to develop dormant fields and search for new ones. It has also provided these producers with unbelievable amounts of capital. The other side of the coin is production declines. There have definitely been some, as there have been for 30 years. The declines we're seeing now are also showing the effects of a long period of very low oil prices. Countries like Mexico and the US have barely put a dime back into their production in the last 20 years, and why should they have? The returns were low with $10/bbl oil. Now with oil above $110/bbl, fields that were left for dead are now attractive investment opportunities. It's now economical and technically feasible to recover things like oil from shale, sands, deep water, and previously uneconomical fields using enhanced oil recovery (CO2 and nitrogen injection). I think temporary supply cielings will be hit (as is presently happening), prices will shoot up and reinvestment will drive supply back up. This will also create "price floors" due to the more expensive technology that will need to be employed to sustain production rates. If the price were to drop to one of these floors, it would knock the uneconomical production sources offline, cause a decrease in supply, and the price would turn back around. I think this is the "undulating plateaus" theory. Of course, this also assumes people are willing to keep shelling out high prices for oil. Right now, demand destruction is being felt by poor countries, and developed parts of the world like the US are only cutting demand by 1% or so. When price gets unbearable for the big customers, the real demand destruction will happen. There are just so many factors at play here. It's more that just looking at the existing oil fields that are currently in production.

I agree Noozer. And it should be rechargeable online so I can make use of my employer's COTA subsidies.

It depends more on the refinery that you put the barrel of crude oil in to. They can be modified to produce more butane, kerosene (jet fuel), naptha, deisel, gasoline, tar, asphalt, etc...

Good job by the Dispatch!

No one says the oil companies are just giving up. All I said was once a country has reached it's peak and gone into decline, the production decline can't be reversed. It's just reality. Does it alter "reality" if new discoveries are made, or new production is brought online? Your basic assumption is that the fields currently in production today are the only fields that will ever be in production, and that we're essentially done discovering new fields. I don't think that is a good prediction of the future because of how capitalism works. While I agree that oil will eventually peak and decline, I don't think we're at THE peak now, just a plateau. I think there are quite a few peak oilers who are getting overzealous with their predictions and ignoring things like 4 mbpd of new production from SA in the next 3-4 years, new production from major offshore discoveries in Brazil, the seemingly infinite capital being put to work by China and Russia, and Canadian oil sands (water shmater...if oil is expensive enough, they'll build pipelines). I don't know that I'll ever agree with CERA's price forecasts (nor did I say that I did), but I think CERA is right about the undulating plateaus. The next few times oil production tries to peak (as it sortof is now), oil producers will be both flooded with new capital and have a reason to reinvest a big portion of it (see the Saudi Arabia article above...$90 billion effin' dollars!). That will lead to large amounts of new capacity being brought online in the next 5 years and a steady ramp up of production...perhaps even new discoveries, and even an opening up of ANWR and the GOM. I think CERA integrates the underlying theory of capitalism in their projections and tekkies skewer them for it. I think this current plateau is due to the world oil supply not being prepared for the explosion in Asian demand pared with a 15 year period of extremely low prices, and no reason to invest capital. Oil production is capital intensive and takes years of planning, but the oil producers weren't prepared for Asian demand for oil to jump 8-10% YOY for 5 years.

From that article, it looks like they can make it to 12 mbpd without much of a problem. It isn't just the 500k from Khursaniyah, but another 250k by December from Shaybah, and they're also working on 900k and 1,200k fields. Not sure on the timeframe of those...next year or the year after I'd assume. The upgrades to refining operations sound impressive too. I agree we're at a plateau, but I don't agree all of these increases from the Saudi's and other countries like Russia and Angola are negligible. There are boatloads of money going into these projects now that should help us reach a new plateau within a few years. I hate to say this, but I agree with Yergin and CERA about the shape of future oil output curves. Really? I think we're in for a really bumpy road ahead, but nothing? That sounds pretty definitive. I wouldn't expect companies to just give up when there are massive $$$ to be made in the oil patch. This was actually one of the things I hated about the Twilight. Simmons talked about how sad it was that the Saudis had to resort to "expensive" practices like injecting CO2 in some of their oldest fields, and then completely ignored that as an option for some of their biggest fields that are still in primary or secondary recovery. Meanwhile, those expensive practices (think $10-20/bbl rather than $2/bbl) are allowing them to bring on production from fields that were previously thought to be depleted but still hat 60% of the oil in the ground. Just think of all the cheap CO2 they could get from the nat gas they're flaring or from their massive refining operations. They haven't even scratched the surface yet.

You build a streetcar to connect them to the flourishing retail in the Short North, or just remind them that their once/month trips to Easton are only 15 minutes by car. :wink: Also, people don't necessarily move downtown to be close to a Puma store. They want to be close to work, restaurants/cafes, public parks, and cultural/entertainment venues. I guess I just don't buy that downtown columbus really needs retail.

Matt Simmons managed to write a best seller doing just that. ;) jk...I read the book, and for me it raised as many questions as it answered. Good read, and it definitely caused me to look for more detailed information.