Who’s Making the Money on High Gas Prices?

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Another ”Great Recession”?

Much can happen in the world today and we never hear about it regardless of how many CNN correspondents are in the field.  But when something happens to raise the price of gas, we all know about it right away.

In 2008, gas peaked at $4/gallon and was attributed, in the most part, to speculative buying.  We saw what $4/gallon did to the economy and unemployment figures, the economy plunged and unemployment shot off the charts.  Many experts say that $4/gallon gasoline is the point at which the cost of gasoline directly and indirectly cripples our economy just as it did in 2008. It’s been 4 years now since the beginning of  ”the great recession” and we’re just now starting to struggle back.

Well don’t celebrate yet.  Something happened, somewhere, to get gas prices moving back up to $4/gallon, and some experts say that it could even hit $5/gallon or higher.  Does this mean a “greater recession”  is in our future?  Unfortunately, that is a possibility.

What happened to push the price up?

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What is a Photovoltaic System?

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Definition of photovoltaic

Photovoltaic can be divided into two words, photo (light) and voltaic (electricity) or electricity from light.  A photovoltaic system can be powered by any source of light, but we typically use the sun as our light source.  The following video explains how a photovoltaic system works.

As the video mentions, there are several advantages to photovoltaic (PV) systems.  There are also disadvantages to PV systems.

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Fuel Cell Energy for Electric Cars

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Fuel cells vs battery

Electric vehicles (EV) are coming back into vogue due to the cost of gasoline, destruction of the environment through CO2 release from gasoline vehicles and the fact that most gas is made from imported oil.  Electric cars are not new.  No one can be sure who built the first EV but Hungarian inventor, Ányos Jedlik, put an electric motor on a crude cart as early as 1828.

For the most part, electric cars became more viable with the developments in the electric motor and the battery.  In the late 1800s, France and Great Britain were the first nations to support the widespread development of electric vehicles. It was not until 1895 that Americans began to devote attention to electric vehicles after an electric tricycle was built by A. L. Ryker and William Morrison built a six-passenger wagon both in 1891.

Today, electric cars are using lithium-ion batteries and extremely efficient electric motors delivering up to 300 horsepower.  But they still have a limitation on distance without recharging the batteries.  The Nissan Leaf is designed to go 100 miles before it must be recharged.

The fuel cell could supply constant electric current thereby eliminating the need to rely on a large array of batteries for electricity.  Of course the fuel cell must be fueled by hydrogen to produce electricity and we’re back to fossil fuels where we get most of the hydrogen we use today.

First we should look at how a fuel cell works.

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Gas to Liquid Technology

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What is gas to liquids?

In a previously published sister article, Putting Natural Gas to Work, I briefly mentioned the gas to liquid (GTL) process.  Many energy experts today believe GTL is an excellent way to use natural gas (abundant and cheap in the U.S.) to fuel vehicles without an expensive rebuilding of our fuel distribution public facilities.  One of the reasons we cannot fall back on compressed natural gas (CNG)  to reduce our dependence on foreign oil is that there are few CNG refuelling station that are open to the public.  With GTL, there would be no need to rebuild our existing fuel distribution facilities as the GTL product can be handled the same as petroleum gasoline and diesel.

Gas to liquids (GTL) technology has to do with converting natural gas into other forms of hydrocarbons like gasoil (diesel), kerosene, base oils, paraffin and naphtha.  GTL products are not carbon free, but having been made from natural gas (the world’s cleanest burning hydrocarbon fuel) it has lower carbon emissions than oil based products and is nearly free of sulfur and aromatic compounds.

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Putting Natural Gas to Work

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Alternative to Gasoline

The Tesla Roadster is an all electric car powered by lithium-ion batteries with the performance of many gasoline powered vehicles.  Tesla Motors also makes a four door sedan called the Model S with similar performance.  Although Tesla has demonstrated that their vehicles that are equipped with the higher capacity (and more expensive) batteries can travel up to 300 miles without a charge, the typical electric car is usually limited to a little over 100 miles between charges.  Electric Vehicles (EV’s) are certainly more environmentally friendly than gasoline powered cars especially when charged using solar or wind produced electricity, but the 100 mile limitation may become problematic.

Another approach to getting away from gasoline engines and our dependency on foreign oil is natural gas powered vehicles.  There are over 12 million compressed natural gas (CNG) vehicles around the world but only about 120,000 in the U. S.  CNG provides similar performance characteristics to gasoline and is abundant in the U. S.  It costs anywhere from $3-4 thousand dollars to convert a gasoline car to CNG and the Honda Civic GX (CNG fueled) costs around $7 thousand more than a similarly equipped gasoline version.

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Kyoto to Cancun: The International Environmental Conference Trail

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Kyoto

The Kyoto Protocol was adopted in Kyoto, Japan, on 11 December 1997 to establish greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions  for the top 37 industrialized countries and the European community.  The objective of the protocol was to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) levels measured in 1990 by 5% during the period of 2008 through 2012.

The Kyoto Protocol assumed that the greatest burden of GHG reduction should be heavier on industrially developed nations.  Each participating nation was given reduction percentages ranging from 0 to 8.  The U.S. at that time was the world’s largest source of GHG and was given a 7% reduction target.  Each nation was to achieve these reductions by “national measures” although there were “mechanisms” established that would provide credits toward GHG reduction goals.

All of the countries in attendance of the Kyoto conference signed the protcol but the only country that did not ratify (commit to) the GHG reduction standards was the United States.  Why was that?

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All-of-the-above Energy Strategy

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Good Delivery

President Obama delivered his third State of the Union address on Tuesday, January 24, 2012.  He covered many of the challenges that face this country today and his remarks were well received.  His comments on American-made energy were particularly interesting as he touched on his agendas for oil and natural gas but offered only a quick mentioned of battery technology, solar and wind initiatives.

His comments regarding the development of domestic oil and natural gas production were somewhat troubling when you consider the U.S. does have only 2% of the worlds reserves of oil and we have a natural gas glut at this time.  However, I was reassured when he said “The development of natural gas will create jobs and power trucks and factories that are cleaner and cheaper, proving that we don’t have to choose between our environment and our economy.” 

What were the key comments made by the President regarding an energy strategy and what should be added?

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Wind Turbines Will Make You Sick?

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Remember Cape Wind?

On the menu of this site there is a selection for Wind where I provide a brief overview of that topic.  I mentioned that Cape Wind, the U.S.’s first offshore wind farm, was approved for construction in Nantucket Sound.  I also mentioned that there was opposition to the construction of the facility by several groups including the Aquinnah Wampanoag Tribe of Native Americans, local fishermen and some well-known residents of Nantucket.  Some of the residents of Nantucket own large estates and are very well placed in political circles.

Opposition from the Wampanoag tribe is understandable, after all the entire Nantucket Sound area once belonged to them until we took it away.  The Massachusetts Fisherman’s Partnership opposition is equally as understandable as over half of their fishing income comes from catch at Horseshoe Bay (the exact proposed location of the Cape Wind project). But I struggle with some of the arguments against the project by the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound.  Their argument is although they were in favor of green sources of energy, they feel the new wind farm would disturb the natural wildlife and diminish the natural beauty of Nantucket Sound. Or put another way, I don’t want the view from my 300+ acre estate cluttered by a bunch of wind turbines.  So a panel of experts were gathered to examine the “evils” of wind turbines.

The Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection and the Massachusetts Department of Public Health commissioned an independent panel of experts to report on wind turbine health impact.  It seems that the good people of Nantucket are worried about getting pain, stiffness, diabetes, high blood pressure, tinnitus, hearing impairment, cardiovascular disease, and headache/migraine from the noise of the wind turbines.  Also examined in the report were shadow flicker (the effect of the shadow of the turbine blade turning) and ice throw (ice being thrown from the turbine blades).

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Crude Treatment of the Environment

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Danger to the Environment

On March 24, 1989, The Exxon Valdez ran aground in Prince William Sound located on the south coast of Alaska.  The super tanker was carrying about 55 million gallons of crude oil when it slammed into Bligh Reef and began leak crude oil into the pristine bay waters. It spilled nearly 11 million gallons of crude oil into a very remote, scenic, and biologically diverse area according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) reports.  Defenders of Wildlife argued that the true number of gallons spilled was closer to 32 million.  Exxon spent over $4 billion to clean up the spill according to their website.

On April 20, 2010, an explosion on the Deepwater Horizon off-shore oil drilling platform killed 11 workers and injured 17 others.  The result of the explosion was a gusher on the sea-floor that dumped over 50,000 barrels of crude oil a day into the Gulf.  A total of 4.9 million barrels of crude oil gushed into the Gulf waters until it was capped on July 15, 2010.  The Deepwater Horizon explosion has been called the worst oil related disaster in the history of mankind.  As of December 31, 2010, BP had spent over $17 billion on their response activities according to their website.

Oil Fields in a Wildlife Refuge

Now the U.S. Congress has proposed a bill that would clear the way for oil wells in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) in northeast Alaska, U.S.  What could possibly go wrong?

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Natural Gas Glut?

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Current Natural Gas Reserves

The U.S. has an untapped reserve of natural gas that will last about 100 years with consumption at the current rate.   Existing stored reserves are at a record level due largely to a controversial new method of fracking shale deposits for natural gas that was not available a decade ago. This caused production to outpace consumption.  The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) states that natural gas working inventories continue to set new record highs.  At the end of  2011 an estimated 3.5 trillion cubic feet (Tcf) of natural gas was in inventories around the country, about 12 percent above inventories of 2010.  Also, the U.S. imported over 3,740,757 million cubic feet of natural gas in 2010 from other countries according to the EIA.

Current Natural Gas Value

Natural gas at the well-head (as it comes out of the ground) is less than $3 per mcf (thousand cubic fee), the cheapest it has been in several years.  How can we use this relatively clean, abundant (although non-renewable) and inexpensive fuel in a way that manages consumption so that we will have enough to use it to transition to the perfect fuel of the future?

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