Of course the problem is that as prices fall, the range of economically viable uses increase, but I doubt this will be too much of an issue. Petrochemicals are already incredibly cheap compared to many other bulk materials, that's how come supermarkets can afford to give away plastic bags, and so many goods come in plastic packaging. There's only so much further that 'even cheaper' can take us.
There are some major decisions we need to make in terms of energy policy. The drive towards renewable is underway, that's good but not enough. I'm beginning to think the environmentalists that have gone pro-nuclear have it right. I read an article a while ago where an environmentalist said Fukushima persuaded him to go pro-nuke. One of the worst designed plants took a direct hit from a once a century Tsunami, the response was bungled, but still there was hardly any leak and no direct radiation casualties. The latest tech is several orders of magnitude safer, and it may well be this or kill the planet. If we go heavy into Nuke and electrify everything, nobody will want the oil for much anyway.
A gallon (US) of gas is about 3350 grams. So if you drive 5 miles round trip in a car getting 20 miles/gallon for local driving, it uses 837 grams of gas. The oil in the bags is about 6% of the oil used on such a shopping trip.
Of course that doesn't include the plastic packaging of food, soft drinks, bottled water, etc. which is probably more comparable to the amount of oil used by the car.
For example, plastic production requires ethylene which is a different product of the fuel cracking process. Notice the PE or HDPE in recycling brands, the E is Ethylene.
Drawing a 1:1 relationship between gasoline and plastic inputs is not accurate.
It makes no sense to spend $10 to create a barrel of crude oil you can sell for $9.
We will consume all convenient oil sooner or later.
Enormous reserves will never be extracted through simple, basic economics. We're already at a breaking point.
Yeah people need to get real: any and all hydrocarbons will be dug out at some point. Unless you want to make a pact to nuke the countries that do it beyond a certain level (which can double as a nice way to mitigate global warming at least for a while). For some nations such as Saudi Arabia, digging and selling hydrocarbons is the core and essence of their existence and is what separating them from bedouins/forest people living in the wild in total savagery. There is absolutely no way they could do something else for a living.
Developed nations could stop doing it. Europe for example, almost did (it has even more shale oil and gas than U.S. does and made a conscious decision to ban it's extraction), U.S. could do too if it wanted, but many poor countries just can't.
True, but the most desirable wells to oilmen once drilled do actually produce oil at such a high rate naturally without further energy input that they need to have their flow rate restricted in order to become manageable. Processing, maintenance and further drilling can then be accomplished from revenue itself without further capital investment.
Relative to other things on Wall Street, it might as well extract and process itself.
Not sure this is true. This site[0] puts the total 2018 catch at only 1553.
Also, as price decrease for this combo, tax fossil fuels for all the damages caused to the environment (taxes to be used to help people switch to renewable energy, and for this transition only otherwise they won't support that tax).
Since it has been a (or perhaps the) strategic commodity, nationally, since WWI our foreign policy is in part directed at those supplies. We expend much military might in the effort to acquire and maintain the alliances and security of the transportation and production of the stuff.
A lot of the geopolitical game in the middle east is about the oil. Not "We're gonna take over your country and take it it!" exactly, but the Suez Canal, the Straits of Hormuz, international shipping lanes, and current geopolitical need for a gas pipeline to supply natural gas to Europe drives a lot of jockeying, international conflict, and of course, US strategic military bases, of which there are many.
Also I read in the news that some government official put boots are on the ground to protect a Saudi oil field (?...!)
So my response to your comment is: "Yes!" however, there will be a long political battle with an absurdly well funded opposition for it.
I mean I guess there's ethanol from plants. Maybe all that corn subsidy stuff actually makes sense in a long-term strategic sense, then. Though you can ramp that up inside a year if you need to and probably much faster by rationing food & feed use of existing corn to repurpose most of it for fuel, so that's probably not what they had in mind and it is just a form of corruption. Crazy, though, if arable land becomes directly correlated to ability to support armored divisions.
The synthetics have different properties, and it might be the case that all the rubber dissolves on your Sikorsky, fuel liners disappear out of the exhaust, and hopefully whatever whiz-bang alloys we've been producing hold up. Who's to say, it's probably classified.
Imagine telling your people they're gonna lose the battle tested and well supplied turbines and power plants all over all the forces with something conceptually new. Large naval vessels and submarines can at least run nuclear, but there isn't yet a reactor small enough for a gunboat or a helicopter afiak.
Plus, can you imagine the battlefield hazards that would create? Suddenly, it looks to my eyes like a lot fewer people getting rescued when your reactor takes some HEAT and goes supercritical.
Luckily we can try the batteries or whatever out in out cars and lawnmowers first, as a handy side effect developing the currently-nonexistent alternative infrastructure. It wouldn't really be too unreasonable to consider EV and alternative fuels a national security priority, but good luck with that, I say to myself.
I think it's worth pointing out that you and I are also humans. Whether they, humans, leave any oil in the ground or not partially depends on us. If we are worried about climate change, we humans can actually do something about it.
yea sure, "I'm in control"
On the other hand, the rate at which that oil is going to be burned is very relevant for climate change, and that is a factor that is not set in stone. So, it's still worth to work in reducing emissions.
There are places where that makes sense economically, but there aren't very many of those.
Of course there are countries that will try to avoid doing that, but they can be coerced to join via carbon tariffs.
No, it wouldn’t.
Not all biomass turns into fossil fuels. And a lot of carbon is stored in living and recently-deceased biomass.
If indeed energy storage costs dominate beyond 40% renewable penetration (total energy) then the exponential curve we see today at the 5% level will likely level off.
In 2018 carbon emissions increased by 2% worldwide even though renewables grew by 15%.
Meanwhile we're actually building massive amounts of fracked natural gas generators, we're shutting down low-carbon nuclear plants, oil use in Asia is going gangbusters, NIMBYism around wind and solar and transmission is ramping up, and carbon emissions are rising at 2%/year.
I feel like the "solar is now dirt cheap, and batteries!" thing is acting as a lullaby when we really need to continue to be alarmed about climate change and work hard to mitigate it. This problem isn't going to solve itself.
It took banning whaling and putting the sperm whale on the endangered species list and banning the sale of sperm oil to stop its usage. I have a feeling fossil fuels will be the same. Even if many countries no longer use coal for primary electricity production, fossil fuel use will continue at far-too-high rates until there's effectively a global ban on net CO2 emissions.
We're not there with fossil fuels, unfortunately. Before Congress can ban them, we need technological alternatives in place that make the transition about as painful as the whale oil ban was.
On progress of the developed world thus far, you are probably right.