U.S. crude oil imports averaged 8.1 million barrels per day last week, down 264 thousand barrels per day from the previous week. Over the last four weeks, crude oil imports have averaged 8.5 million barrels per day, 1.4 million barrels per day below the same four-week period last year. Total motor gasoline imports (including both finished gasoline and gasoline blending components) last week averaged 750 thousand barrels per day. Distillate fuel imports averaged 185 thousand barrels per day last week.
The four week period of '09 vs '08 had imports down 16.5% year over year. For the YEAR to date vs. the same period last year, imports are down 11.1%.
If it were not for the 643,000 bpd of ethanol produced in the U.S. and blended with gasoline, I believe we would be having some real trouble. I also think that ethanol is a very permanent guest at the table, and that within a few years the U.S. will be unable to export corn (the U.S. is now somewhere between 66.6% and 75% of the world export market of corn). Boy, are the Japanese gonna be p*ssed off when that comes to pass. Japan is the world's biggest corn importer, using the grain for domestic meat production. Since meat is roughly 3x the price in Japan as it is in the U.S., this should get really, really interesting.
But I digress...
How much more ethanol could we produce at a maximum? Good question. I will have a firm answer shortly, but I'll throw a guestimate out there - 2 million bpd (triple current production). The unintended consequence of which would be unacceptable, IMHO. On the other hand, had the 643k bpd of ethanol failed to show up, the consequences of that would not be so hot, either.
Ethanol and increased domestic production of crude has kept our feet out of the fire given the decline in imports. 2010 is the year in which the truth is likely to prevail. Or not. The plot thickens...
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It is very much worth watching, if you have the time. If not, the first 30 minutes gets the point across. I would say it is 75% accurate, and 25% agenda, though whose agenda I know not. Still, I liked it, and I think the documentarian makes a good case while only slightly abusing facts and truth. Like I said, it is at least 75% accurate, and that's 100% more than what you get from the media.
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I regularly beat up the Liberal Elite on this sight. I should save some of my fire for the non- working poor. I got some street cred in this area of study, a PhD., as it were. There are some good reasons poor people are poor. We all know what they are, I'll spare you the lecture. But here we are. We have created a significant portion of of Americans who believe in a "free lunch".
In case they are feeling smug, I would like to point out to the American elite that all revolutions eventually eat their young.
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That ethanol number keeps coming back to me. Something not right in the inventory data of gasoline blending components... I need to sleep on it.
Back soon.
libertariananimal (at) gmail (d0t) com
25 comments:
Greg,
yet another post that gets me motivated,via numbers. First, your instinct on the ethanol numbers maybe right, my truck is running like S*&#t lately. More E then reported? Truck engine computers don't lie! Ha!ha!
The 11.1% decline is ever so growing. Where will we be in a year? At that pace I can not see a slow decent happening, at least without a bit of pain. If alternatives are out there hope they get a move on.
Thanks for the update, it matters!
Peace
Not just Japan that will bleat if more corn goes for ethanol. Its not just the corn that feeds meat, its the corn that feeds people and underlies the price of basic food across the developing world.
When corn-to-ethanol started it finally made the direct connection between food and oil prices (and food prices doubled). Now as oil rises, base food rises 1-for-1.
With 2 billion people on less than 2$ a day, and 1 billion on half that and who spend 80% of their daily budget on food, we'll see mass starvation and migration unlike anything we've ever known.
Of course many of us will just be 'Malthusian' about it, turn off the horrors on the TV news and jump in their 4X4!
Just watched the film link. I agree with the priciples but its not just Obama, this is Old News; this has been the basis of the main argument between European liberals (yes, I know liberal is a dirty word there, but it means something different here) and US political/industrial hegemony for at least 25 years!
You see yourself as Libertarians but Europeans think you're not because you've given control over to corporate profit and ownership, and reward monopoly and greed. America hasn't been a genuine democracy for a generation, perhaps more, because you all jump to the corporate tune. Glad to see some of you finally 'get it'.
Americans see criticisms from the RotW as either jealousy or attacks on democracy and libertarian values; generally its not true. It is a criticism of state-sponsored corporate financial rape of World economies, all the while thinking you are somehow doing good.
Now China has taken the baton. At least it will be honest and blatant in its state control of the globalised economy, and not dress it up in a flag of Democracy and Freedom.
Donal:
No argument that Americans, like Europeans, are swayed in every belief they have by the all knowing, all seeing, all powerful T.V.
Also, Governments on BOTH sides of the pond LOVE the big corporation as the gift that keeps on giving - these entities are perfect as tax generation vehicles, of course government is going to bow to them. That's where the money is. For better or worse, The People (remember them?) seem to like the current arrangement. After all, they own the vast majority of the financial instruments that make up these entities.
Its an interesting conundrum, one that I have no answer for.
There was a story out last week that some government agency - I think it was the EPA, but am not sure - was debating moving the maximum allowable amount of ethanol in gasoline from 10% to 15%. Now of course, so-called flex-fuel vehicles would never notice, but it seems to me that ordinary gasoline-fueled engines and systems are going to have increasing difficulties much beyond 10%. (There was a reason the limit was originally set at 10%, after all.) Cold starting promises to be especially difficult I would think, in such engines as ethanol requires a richer fuel-air mixture than what ordinary engine fuel systems are set up to deliver, and this shortcoming would be especially noticeable during said cold starts.
Peace,
You mentioned alternatives. They are out there, but the first significant contribution is at least 8 years away. First the Loony Left needs to be swept aside then there is 5 years of construction before a drop of replacement fuel comes on line (except ethanol). Ethanol is an immoral, indefensible alternative. Period.
Bureaucrat is firm in his belief that no alternatives exist, and will never exist. Others express similar opinions. I encourage everyone here to avoid the natural tendency in all of us to be Luddites. Here is a story,
In the late '70s and early '80 I worked as a television design engineer. During that time I got to see the results of all kinds of brilliant and hair-brained schemes to design a flat screen television. The effort began in the 1950s. The picture tube was invented in the 1920s. The general consensus was that it would NEVER be replaced.
In the 1980s there was a huge demand for a PC that would sit in your lap. People would pay $5000 for one. So, they took the most promising technology they had and made a flat screen display. The color accuracy would NEVER be good enough for TV. It was IMPOSSIBLE to make a screen bigger than 14 inches. The reaction time would NEVER be fast enough to display a moving picture without smearing... Blah! Blah! Blah! After 85 years as the premier display technology, try to find a TV with a CRT display today.
Times change, knowledge increases.
Regards,
Coal Guy
Thought you might like it, and not just because Celente is in it. This is very good too:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zOXmJ4jd-8&feature=player_embedded
He actually touches on a lot of the same points at the end.
Greg; its true that Britain has followed down the American corporate path, especially about gambling, sorry I mean 'investment banking'.
But France, Italy, Denmark and the Scandinavian economies put families first and constrain their banking to genuine business needs. They might not make as much on the upswing, and they've certainly had bankers fingers burnt with the derivatives shenannigans, but the underlying philosophy is solid.
I'd say the important thing is to learn lessons. Sadly, not much sign of that either side of the Pond!
Ok, here we go (just call me WikipediaBureaucrat :)) ...
1) I have driven my UNALTERED 1992 Buick LeSabre on E85/ethanol continuously for almost 4 years, in the cold, heat, city and suburbs. Other than hard starting out of the garage, the damn car still works! It was supposed to blow up!!!! Not one repair has ever been attrubuted to the E85. And, it has never stalled once, especially for those fast left turns.
2) If we are going to talk about corn ethanol and food, we need some understanding. Corn ethanol is make from FIELD corn, which is 99% of all U.S. corn. Field corn is NOT directly edible by humans. The rest is SWEET corn (the 1% -- the cans of Jolly Green Giant corn). Field corn is made into: feed for livestock -- the animals that we eat and our pets (47%), ethanol & more livestock feed (24%), exports (19%), and corn cereal/starch/syrup/oil and lots of other products like plastics and fabrics (10%). Sweet corn isn't used to make ethanol, and it sounds like field corn can be used to make ethanol AND animal feed. There's no apparent food problem here that I can see.
3) HOWEVER, if you took every single kernel of U.S. corn (field) and converted it to ethanol, we could only at best replace 15% of all the gasoline (150 billion gallons) and diesel (60 billion gallons) that this country burns every year. There is not enough corn, nor will there ever be enough corn, to displace anywhere near that quantity of oil products.
4) I'm a proud member of the Loony Left :) because thanks to the dimwitted right (Jeffers gang) plunging us into a depression (with the help of Dodd and Franks), we now have converted America into a socialist country whether you like it or not. What else is endless stimulus called? :)
Plus, Jeffers, you never did say where you were going to put all these oil imports if you HAD gotten them. Oil storage around the world is MAXXED out. The U.S. is maxxed out at 330 million barrels. We have so much oil coming out of the Gulf (for now) we don't need any more imports! We wouldn't have anywhere to put them anyway! :)
Bu; thanks for the farming lesson. But food still doubled in price!
As for stimulus funding, I see it and the anger generated by videos (as in the post) as further steps towards a future revolution in America where the pissed-off populace rise up, overturn the bankers, multinationals and government stooges and establish a traditional Marxist state! (Karl, not Bros!)
Blog while you can, before its banned!
Far as I can tell the local Jewel foodstore has all food items practically on sale. If you saw food price rises, it would have to have been driven by the high commodity prices last year (again, driven by speculation, not supply and demand). We are in a deflation still and everything is for sale. The most recent indicator: the huge numbers of for rent signs in storefronts and apartments (in Chicago). :)
(We aren't going to have a revolution as long as the food stores and gas stations remain open. Sorry. :))
Bur,
Please, field corn is the corn of corn meal, corn starch, corn oil, cattle feed, tortillas, grits, corn flakes, and on and on. Corn products end up in many foods. Where do you think it goes? Sweet corn is for corn on the cob. Yummy, but that is a minor use, to say the least.
To the extent that we convert food into motor fuel, we raise the price of food everywhere. If the Loony Left wants a REAL CAUSE that will help the poorest of the poor, stop development of bio-fuels. Release the land to food production.
Regards,
Coal Guy
Bur,
Have you not noticed which party runs the administration? Quit listening to the rhetoric and look at what they are doing. They are way way into preserving the system and protecting the Fat Boys at the top. They are making GWB look like Abraham Lincoln.
Regards,
Coal Guy
Bureaucrat:
You are right, I retract my info on ethanol.
Regarding alternatives to oil: of course they exist and will improve. It is not the technical possibility of alternatives that is the issue. The issue is the return on energy investment (ROEI). Oil has historically given a much higher return on the energy put into extracting it than almost any conceivable alternative can give. The oil has been processed by nature into a highly concentrated and (up till now) easily extracted, easily transported fuel.
No other alternative comes close, because they all require much processing and conversions to become useful. It is that energy cost that is going to destroy our current living arrangement.
The Germans figured out how to make gasoline from waste wood. It didn't save them from the effects of being cut off from conventional oil. It simply allowed them to limp on longer.
Oil alternatives could give us all kerosene lamps and one lorry/truck per village to transport necessary food, but the suburban lifestyle and much else has no conceivable way of surviving. Solar is a joke, except for low wattage applications. The energy it takes to produce the panels is high. Even if some of the new technologies allow us to basically print solar panels on plastic sheets, the land area required to replace conventional oil with solar is immense, and the conversion is difficult: electric cars require large battery banks. Batteries take large amounts of energy and resources to create, and they must be replaced too often to be viable post-peal-oil.
Nuclear? The conventional energy needed to build and retire the plants, mine the ore, and build the infrastructure is high.
I haven't done all the calculations myself, so I am not claiming that my points here are 100% valid, but my intuition is that the analysts who do the ROEI critiques are correct: oil and coal are stored, ancient sunlight. We are thus burning through eons of concentrated, stored energy.
New technology cannot break the laws of physics. The fact that LCD screen, or microchip was invented is wonderful, but these inventions had nothing to do with breaking the laws of thermodynamics and entropy. Beating Peak Oil would require us to find a source of concentrated, easily extracted (i.e., extraction or production takes very little energy) energy.
None of the alternative energy sources do that, and some are not even energy sources (e.g. hydrogen, which is only an energy carrier, not a source).
Algae to oil? Give me a break. You have to grow it using current sunlight, and then process it. Dilute energy source.
We will survive, but our current political, economic, and even social systems will not. The only unknown is how violent the transition will be. How massive and fast will the involuntary population reduction be?
Economists have ruled the roost for way too long. They are about to be superseded by physics and population biology. Deer population increases. Wolf population increases, and wolves eat too many deer. Deer population crashes, followed by wolf population crashing. This idea is repugnant to our sense that humanity is special. We are special, for sure, in our ability to fool ourselves. On an individual basis we can make better than average choices, but the masses act by the law of averages, and mass democracy-corporate kleptocracy almost guarantees we are going to make all the wrong choices as a nation at this critical juncture. Your view of this idea will determine how you personally prepare, and the likelihood of your DNA being transmitted to the next generation.
Donal,
Really! The closest any state has gotten to Marxism is some form of single party, oppressive, Fascist government. When all is said and done, the elite just can't bring themselves to live like the rest of us.
But please, go first, if you insist. Put your money where your mouth is and donate all of your assets and belongings to your government save enough to rent a small apartment and buy food. The literature of the left tells us that we'll all be much happier without all those gadgets we buy. I know a lot of left leaning people with money. Haven't seen a one get rid of it. Apparently, sacrifice and egalitarianism is for the rest of us.
Regards,
Coal Guy
Pub,
As I said, in the short run we're screwed. In the longer term alternatives will be developed. We will not have a shortage of electricity. There are too many alternatives. MS is exactly right. As to how this will all work out, I don't know. I'm 100% sure, however, if we all end up as subsistence farmers, the problems will have been political, not technical.
I spent quite a bit of time in the "never gonna happen" camp. Being wrong all the time got to be tedious. There are many possibilities in the energy area that are not limited by the laws of physics. Some of them will win in the market.
Nuclear generated electric power has had a fully loaded cost near 5 to 6 cents per kilowatt-hour. I think that is around $85 for energy equivalent to a barrel of oil. Wind is now in the same range. Solar is improving. Both wind and solar are still coming down the cost curve pretty rapidly.
If no additional large source of carbon based fuel presents itself, I'd bet that the problems of handling anhydrous ammonia are resolved, and it is used as the next motor fuel. Ammonia can be made from air, water and electricity. It burns to nitrogen and water.
But, what do I know?
Regards,
Coal Guy
Excellent comments all.
I'm getting cranky in my old age.
Regards,
Coal Guy
Bur,
While I am not surprised some cars run on E85 unaltered, let me say that finding a few models that will do so is far cry from running every contemporary gasoline car on E85. Not all fuel and engine control systems are alike. Some have a greater tolerance for rich or lean conditions. Ethanol requires about a 10.5 to 1 air/fuel mixture while gasoline is about 14.5 to 1. Some cars will be able to swing the difference, but many won't.
The newer cars with the more sophisticated sensors might not work well. But, I just thought I'd would mention that in a "Jeffers crash oil import plummet (JCOIP)," we government people may be forced to tell the public that certain members of the civil service have tried E85 in normal (older) cars and, in a REAL pinch, the dumb stuff seems to work ok. ;)
Coal guy; marxism isn't chosen by the owners, their wealth is seized by revolution and thereafter controlled by The People. If you want an example, look to the American War of Independance seizing the British owned capital asset (land), and producing a constitution of 'by the people, for the people', a good example of Marxist declaration!
Of course now you've changed all that for a fascist state, with one bourgoise elite pretending to be two democratic parties.
Or am I being cynical again?
Donal:
I DO think you are being overly cynical.
Internally, TPTB in the US are not too bad. We can blog and text and bitch to our hearts content, if that means anything.
There is still some teeth in the US Constitution still, though some are old and loose. Perhaps it will make a comeback
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