Sunday, March 23, 2014

A Three-Week Hiatus - Posting to Resume April 13

A crush of consulting work, a heavy travel schedule and an impending move (closer to downtown Portland) necessitate a three-week hiatus in posting. I expect to resume posting on Sunday, April 13.

Sunday, March 16, 2014

Net vs. gross energy: Is it wise to be complacent?

Everyone knows that when a potential employer makes a job offer, the salary or wage he or she proposes isn't what you'll be taking home. What you'll take home is your net pay. The number the employer offers you is your gross pay, and that's just what it says on your pay stub.

It's not quite a perfect analogy with net energy versus gross energy. But it's an everyday analogy that most people can understand. Net pay is what you have to pay your bills today. And, net energy is what society has in order to conduct its business (and its fun) on any given day. Net energy is what's left after the energy sectors of the economy--oil and gas, coal, nuclear, hydroelectric, renewable energy industries, and farming which provides food for human and animal energy and crops for biofuels--expend the energy they must to extract energy from the environment and then sell the surplus to the rest of us.

We don't often think of these sectors of the economy because for most people they are out of sight and therefore out of mind. And, until the last decade food and energy have been so consistently cheap in the last 60 years or so, that few people ever paused to ponder the fact that it takes energy to get energy. And, after all, cheap energy is an indication that it takes very little energy to extract huge amounts of energy from the environment. So, why worry about that?

Sunday, March 09, 2014

Ukraine, Russia and the nonexistent U.S. oil and natural gas "weapon"

Commentators were falling all over themselves last week to announce that far from being impotent in the Ukraine crisis, the United States had a very important weapon: growing oil and natural gas production which could compete on the world market and challenge Russian dominance over Ukrainian and European energy supplies--if only the U.S. government would change the laws and allow this bounty to be exported.

But, there's one very big problem with this view. The United States is still a net importer of both oil and natural gas. The economics of natural gas exports beyond Mexico and Canada--which are both integrated into a North American pipeline system--suggest that such exports will be very limited if they ever come at all. And, there is no reasonable prospect that the United States will ever become a net exporter of oil.

U.S. net imports of crude oil and petroleum products are approximately 6.4 million barrels per day (mbpd). (This estimate sits between the official U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) numbers of 5.5 mbpd of net petroleum liquids imports and 7.5 mbpd of net crude oil imports. And so, to understand my calculations, please see two comments I made in a previous piece here and here. My number is for December 2013, the latest month for which the complete statistics needed to make my more accurate calculation are available.)

Sunday, March 02, 2014

Taking a short break--No post this week

Other responsibilities have made it impossible to find time to write my weekly piece. I expect to post again on Sunday, March 9.