Re:Norway Is Walking Away from Billions of Barrels of Oil
by sgt101 on Monday April 08, 2019 @11:20AM
(#19605970)
I think that even past 1 there's a value in a portable energy store.
Re:Norway Is Walking Away from Billions of Barrels of Oil
by beat on Monday April 08, 2019 @11:50AM
(#19606298)
On the other hand, there's nothing magical about petroleum that can't be synthesized, given enough energy (electricity from solar/wind works), and simple water/CO2/etc to provide the building blocks for long-chain hydrocarbons. It's even more straightforward to start from cellulose or plant sugars.
I agree that for things like aircraft, there's unlikely to ever be an electrical substitute for the energy density of organic fuel. But that could be done entirely from renewables if needed.
> Eventually - and I don't think that point is far away - it will be impossible to produce fossil fuels cheaper than the cost of solar/wind.
I hope and believe that you're right. But I don't think it will be because the price of oil is going up, but because the price of alternatives is going down.
> Once EROEI dips below 1, price is negative. It becomes impossible to extract the oil profitably
EROEI is not a constant, it changes with technology too.
And we'll still need oil for plastic, so it's theoretically possible that we'll use alternative energy to heat the tar to extract the oil to use it in plastic.
But woe is us if we ever get to that state. We'll have burnt so much oil that we'll be well past the climate change tipping point.