Gas Guzzlers' Shock Therapy

Even the experts just don't know the answer

This Popular Science article offers a different perspective.

Geologists say the end is nigh. New recovery tech may tell a different story.
by Kevin Kelleher


Quick, how many years will it be before the world runs out of oil? Don't know? Join the club. Actually, choose one of several clubs, each of which vehemently disagrees with the others on how much usable crude is left on the earth. The question is far from an academic exercise: This year oil hit a near record-high $40 a barrel, and Royal Dutch/Shell Group downgraded its reserves by 4.5 billion barrels.

While consumers pay for perceived shortages at the pump, scientists and economists struggle to reach consensus over "proven oil reserves," or how much oil you can realistically mine before recovery costs outstrip profits. Economist Leonardo Maugeri of Italian energy company Eni fired up the debate this May with an essay in Science that accused the "oil doomsters" of crying wolf.

Chief among the pessimists is the Association for the Study of Peak Oil, a group of European scientists who estimate that maximum oil production around the globe will peak in 2008 as demand rises from developing economies such as China. "If you squeezed all the oil in Iraq into a single bottle, you could fill four glasses, with the world consuming one glass of oil each year," says physicist and ASPO president Kjell Aleklett. "We've consumed nine bottles since oil was discovered, and we have another 9 or 10 in the refrigerator. How many more are there? Some say five or six, but we say three."

Others believe, like Maugeri, that the number of glasses is virtually limitless. John Felmy, chief economist at the American Petroleum Institute, argues that peak oil- production estimates are so far off that for all practical purposes we might as well act as if oil will flow forever. "Ever since oil was first harvested in the 1800s, people have said we'd run out of the stuff," Felmy says. In the 1880s a Standard Oil executive sold off shares in the company out of fear that its reserves were close to drying up. The Club of Rome, a nonprofit global think tank, said in the 1970s that we'd hit peak oil in 2003. It didn't happen.

If there is an end to the debate, advanced oil-recovery technologies will most likely find it. A new seismic survey technique, for instance, sends sound waves of varying frequencies thousands of meters belowground. Microphones arrayed aboveground record the reflected signals, and computer software models a 3-D portrait of possible oil hot spots. The surveys have now added a fourth dimension, creating a time-lapse simulation of fluid movements.

Companies are also finding sophisticated ways to mine more oil from existing wells. Flexible, coiled-tube drills that carve out horizontal side paths are a marked improvement over conventional, rigid drills that move only straight down. Using such technology, companies hope to soon harvest 50 to 60 percent of oil from existing wells, up from today's 35 percent.

Biotechnology, too, is keeping the black gold flowing. University of Alberta scientists are searching for microorganisms that could dilute viscous, hard-to-recover oil and make it flow more freely.

"Technology can help push peak oil production further and further out," says Satish Pai, vice president of oilfield technologies for Schlumberger Limited. But only time will tell if it's enough.

 

Better Design = Better ICE

Rather long article but worth the read. A snippet follows.

Obsession: Mr. Singh’s Search for the Holy Grail

India is booming. The expanding population has overwhelmed the Bangalore-Mysore road the way a river floods its banks, and the flow of two-way traffic is choked with a living history of human transportation. There are belching herds of diesel trucks, diesel buses and iron-framed diesel tractors. There are wooden-wheeled carts pulled by brightly painted Brahma bulls, and two-stroke-motor rickshaws fueled by kerosene or cooking oil or whatever else is flammable and cheap. There are mopeds and bipeds and bicycles and motorcycles, and every conceivable type of petrol-powered, internally combusting automobile, from doddering Ambassador cabs to gleaming 16-valve Mercedes miracles. But there’s only one car like the one Somender Singh and I are riding in right now.

That’s because Singh invented it. Or rather, reinvented a piece of it: a small detail on the engine that he calls “direct drive.†He claims that his invention makes an engine cleaner, quieter and colder than its internal-combustion cousins around the world—while using up to 20 percent less gas.

“Some people say to me, ’Singh, why are you wasting your time on such a thing?’†he yells, his singsong Indian English barely piping above the tooting traffic. “But I tell you sir—I tell the world: I have conquered the internal combustion engine!â€

To hear Singh tell it, his story has all the makings of a Bollywood movie, a classic heartwarmer about a small-fry Indian grease monkey who challenges the big boys armed only with a dream and a dirty wrench. And there’s no doubt that he has come up with something new, at least in the eyes of the U.S. Patent Office. But has a potbellied philosopher- mechanic from Mysore really discovered the efficiency El Dorado sought by every auto manufacturer, R&D center and thermal engineer from Detroit to Darmstadt?

Well, maybe. So far, all Singh’s invention has earned him is a few polite rejection letters from presidents, professors and auto manufacturers—while costing him tens of thousands of borrowed rupees and an untold number of sleepless nights. His eyes are glazed with the heat of an idea he can neither sell nor surrender. Mostly, he seems to have discovered the hard way that in 2004, it takes more than a patent and personal conviction to reinvent the automobile

 

We should be taxing what we want less of and subsidizing what we want more of. We are doing just the opposite as illustrated by the embarassingly gross tax write off given to Hummer owners. If the tax structure were re-designed, we could encourage alternative energy, higher fuel standards, lower carbon emissions, and a generally cleaner environment. That takes leadership, which we lack, and the guts to stand up against corporate America which thinks only in short term profits. Since the government (both parties) are in bed with the corporate state, such action is not likely anytime soon.
CAFE standards, as one poster pointed out, probably won't work because it's the consumer that needs education, not the car manufacturer.
Granted, the Big 3 have behaved appallingly in the face of global warming, etc.
Solid environmental education and leadership from the President can do a lot to educate the choices made by consumer America. As long as benighted gluttons like Cheney and Bush prattle on about how "conservations is a nice civic virture, but not a policy", and, "the American lifestyle is NOT negotiable", we will continue our headlong plunge into global warming and possibly some "Road Warrior" dark ages.
None of "us kids" is going to willingly give up the candy that's rotting our teeth until someone assumes leadership and helps develop the resolve necessary to admit that, yes, oil is running out and the world is getting warmer.
I've had the thought that if I, average American, can be inspired to buy a Prius and begin the process of solar converting our house, that lots of other Americans in my socio-economic class are probably doing the same thing. From a grass roots movement, we will probably have to educate the government and assume the leadership the President and Congress so sorely lack.
Bob