imlach - so? You are prescribing that we stop using Oil then?

Fine - but what will happen to it when the Earth ends? It will get burnt up in an intergalactic fireball ........... well, to be frank - I might as well BURN it NOW!

No point conserving something that WILL run out is there? You will just be delaying the inevitable?!

Pete

 

What will happen is that the oil becomes more and more expensive as the places left to extract it from get more inaccessable and more expensive technologies are required. Once prices start to increase demand will slow and the volume of production will decrease making the cost per barrel even higher again.

At the same time alternative enery sources will be getting cheaper and more sophisticated as technology advances.

The point at which it becomes too expensive to use oil as an alternative will come long before it ever runs out.

I'm sure oneday possibly (towards the end of our lifetimes?) we will look upon petrol fired cars the same way we now consider steam engines.

 

Have I not reiterated many times I don't mean STOP using it.

...another one with their head in the sand. Why abuse it cos we have it? If we have it longer, there's more time to find an REAL alternative.

 

I wonder what price the very last barrell of oil will sell for?

As Boost says, it will NEVER actually run out ..... its just that people will prefer the alternative, whatever that may be.

Pete

 

So imlach - you say use it more slowly?

I ask the question WHY? No need to, an alternative WILL arrive as the price of Oil becomes unbearable .............. therefore

Carry on fellas!!

Pete

 

Consumption is at record levels.
Production is now in decline.

Now I know from previous discussions that your maths is crap Pete , but even YOU can understand that one!

 

Production is in FORCED decline by the producing countries to maintain the price

As I have witnessed before, your argument is so full of holes that it looks as solid as a 2 week old Alfa!!

I will repeat, watch my typing, oil will reach such an expensive price LONG before it runs out that there will be a whole host of alternatives ...... so, go hug your tree I'm going out for a pointless blast

Pete

 

Why do people go on and on about conserving this, that and the other, I remember at school the teacher telling us to place a brick in the toilet cistern at home to save water, what happens when you have a huge ****e and it wont go down until the third flush?? great idea gone out the window i think also what about all the fuel wasted by cars sitting in traffic jams every day, if a few switched off their engines whilst at the traffic light that means i could take my car up the news agents and not feel guilty about walking!!

Water companies lose 30% yes 30% of their supply thru damged and leaking pipes so i think i will just carry on regardless and stick two fingers up to the do gooders who go on about saving energy etc

 

Shame we can't drink the stuff ourselves...

£2.40 for a pint of beer... only 48p for a pint of petrol

Mick

 

The reason we have so few pits left is the Tory government manipulated the electricity market to make gas powered stations cheaper when in fact they are not. This has now been corrected but the damage is already done.

This has meant that the UK's natural gas reserves will be dry within 10-12 years and the UK will be dependant on imported gas from the unstable eastern block for or gas and a major proportion of our electricity generation.

The remaining few UK mines produce the cheapest Deep Mined coal in Europe but countries like Germany and Poland offer massive subsidies to their produces who then sell on to the UK. Just imagine the uproar if that happened in car production or electronics. Depending on the Governments decision on power station emmissions all UK mines could be closed by 2010. It takes upto 10 years to sink a new mine and start production.

This country is heading for some major problems with generation and fossil fuels and the Government has it's head in the sand.
Wind and Solar power is only expected to keep pace with the increase in demand, pits are still closing, nuclear is on the decline and receiving massive subsidy, and the country has 10-12 years gas left.

The lights will be going out soon!!!!!

Lee

 

deep mining is too expensive, opencast is the thing now the world is full of coal but because of scab child labour in foreign countries it is cheaper for UK power stations to buy imported coal HUNTERSTON DEEP SEA PORT is where the blood money coal arrives

 

Lee - we shall just invade an Eastern state and take what we want, history goes full circle!

Pete

 

"UK Coal" now produces coal at less than world coal prices. They can't take advantage of this as all mines are at full production and the extra capacity is already closed. There isn't enough profit for massive projects into new reserves so most pits are coming to the end of their life.

The Government decides soon on power station emmissions, one choice is to equippe UK's coal fired stations with de-sulphurisation plants. The other is to burn low sulphur imported coal. This will come in 2008

We have to wait and see.

Cheers
Lee

 

Not so. Gas fired power stations will always be cheaper (and much quicker to build) than coal fired stations. Gas turbines nearly 60% efficient, coal fired boilers 38%. Coal stations need huge coal delivery, unloading systems, conveyors. Gas fired stations just need a pipe.

The government manipulation was as simple as just allowing power companies to burn gas to make privatisation easier. Before this you were not allowed to burn gas in power stations, gas was always considered too valuable a fuel to use for something as crude as making electricity. But this changed as soon as it suited the government.

 

scabs, don't talk to me about scabs! my father stuck it till the end!

 

Scotland is full of low sulpher coal and opencast sites that are having to close cos they cant compete with imported prices

 

oh and i still burn coal in my house for heat and hot water.

todays coal is crap compared to 10 years ago.

 

Gas stations are cheaper to build but gas prices are mostly linked to oil prices. Since the generation market was put on a level playing field and suppliers have to generate for demand coal has been the cheapest option. World coal prices are still very low but gas and oil prices have risen greatly.

Lee

 

With all the environmental restrictions in the UK opencast isn't all that cheap and all the Scottish deep mines have sadly all been closed loosing millions of tonnes of the UK natural coal reserves.

With the current world coal price many of the closed mines would have been profitable today. The UK's fossil fuel reserves should not be left in the hand of market forces, even Germany, USA, Canada as well as the Eastern block countries realise this.

Lee

 

Scotland England and Wales are all rich with coal and because coal fired power stations are here for the forseable future i think we may see some deep mines reopened and the coal industry booming again in the uk

 

You can't just reopen a mine because the shafts are filled and the mines flood and collapse. It is easier to sink a new mine but this can take between 6-10 years and cost around £250 million.

Lee

 

logic lee said

"UK Coal" now produces coal at less than world coal prices. They can't take advantage of this as all mines are at full production and the extra capacity is already closed. There isn't enough profit for massive projects into new reserves so most pits are coming to the end of their life.


then saidWith all the environmental restrictions in the UK opencast isn't all that cheap and all the Scottish deep mines have sadly all been closed loosing millions of tonnes of the UK natural coal reserves.

With the current world coal price many of the closed mines would have been profitable today. The UK's fossil fuel reserves should not be left in the hand of market forces, even Germany, USA, Canada as well as the Eastern block countries realise this.

What about the child labour some of the coal comes from africa and morocco some of these pits see horiffic accidents everyday its smart a rse p ricks like you that try to justify this kind of action

 

When have I ever justified that? Why the abuse?

Most people think that the UK coal industry is a unprofitable outdated dead industry.
Yet it can compete with imports from heavily subsidised countries, from countries with child and slave labour and from countries like china with appaling safety records where disasters are common. Unfortuntly there is little money for future explotation of reserves and the industry will die.

I'm actively involved with trying to get these imports stopped and I'm involved with lobbying the Government for the largest possible UK coal industry.
Sorry if you got the wrong end of the stick

Lee

 

The government should look at the human cost of this cheap imported coal and just remember Piper alpha, allowing this coal to be imported is like having a piper alpha every 12 months.
We could have a great coal industry here in the UK

 

Oil: Finite reserves (30-40 years supply left)
Uses: plastics, synthetic materials, roads (bitumens), pharmaceuticals, fertilisers and burning it for power generation

Gas: Finite reserves (80+ years supply ?)
Uses: burning it for power (regarded as "clean")

Coal: Finite reserves (150+ years supply ?)
Uses: burining it for power (and generally regarded as a "dirty" fuel, or lots of expensive scrubbers needed to clean the exhaust afterwards)

There is no efficient way to convert gas and coal to the raw hydrocarbons needed by the plastics industry. Current methods are hugely inefficient. So it could easily be argued that we really are wasting a precious natural resource like oil by simply burning it, whether in cars or powerstations. We should move away from burning oil and keep it for materials and plastic production which benefits virtually every aspect of people's lives. Oil would last well into the next century if we stopped burning it, benefitting billions of people.

But that scenario is wishful thinking, people don't want to give up what they have now. They somehow think there are oceans of untapped oil reserves out there. Well there aren't. Small discoveries will be made, but the total recoverable oil reserves will continue to decline as we pump it out. E.g. IIRC the north Alaskan Reserve that Bush was so insistent will be drilled and expolited is estimated to contain only enough oil for 6 weeks US consumption. Increases in the recovery efficiency of oil will also improve, but by maybe a couple of percent at most.

 

Doesn't history teach that those with the resources tend to win?

 

How can gas be clean? Have you never smelt a fart before?

 

Running out isn't the issue ... the question is how rapidly scarcity will cause the price to rise inexorably.

There are a number of well-informed WWW sites that argue we have reached (and passed) the point of maximum production, while consumption is rocketing in the Far-East, partly to produce low-cost consumer goods.

Agriculture has been defined as the transformation of oil into food. There is currently no substitute for oil as the feedstock for fertilisers etc, plus it is involved in every part of food manufacture, from plowing to final delivery at your local supermarket.

So rising oil price will cause price inflation in just about everything we buy, petrol being the least of our worries. Basic economics says that the price will rise to reduce demand until demand is equal to falling supply ....

Reducing your personal fuel consumption has minimal impact so long as the US prices oil at a level that encourages ludicrous profligacy on a vast scale (especially in agriculture).

Rising prices will fix things naturally. It isn't going to be fun. Which is why I now have a WRX .... making hay while the sun still shines .... ;-)

 

I agree Valkeerie, things cannot continue as they are for the next 30 odd years with oil use increasing at a few percent each year with price remaining largely static. Production will start to drop off and the price of oil will increase massively as we are so dependent on oil right now and have so few alternatives. I think the effect is called low price elasticity of demand if I remember my school economics correctly. Even if you double the price of fuel, demand would not reduce that much. The same effect can be seen with cigarettes. It doesn't matter if you increase the price of cigarettes by a pound a pack, overall demand will not drop much. The economies of the world are addicted to oil and we'll all get the DT's when the supplies start dropping.

 

Elasticity - that is it precisely ;-) The oil doesn't have to run out ... all that is required is a surplus of demand over supply. It is like 100 passengers on the Titantic bidding for the last 10 seats in a lifeboat. Expect massive price inflation in all commodities in the next 10 years.

You read it here ....