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- Losing the Iran War May Be the Best Outcome for the World
- A New Explanation for Tariffs and Bombings
- Understanding Deglobalization: The Role of Diesel and Jet Fuel
- 2026: Expect a very uneven world economic downturn
- Too many promises; too few future physical goods
- A lack of very cheap oil is leading to debt problems
- What has gone wrong with the economy? Can it be fixed?
- Sierra Club talk that may be of interest
- Why oil prices don’t rise to consistently high levels
- Worrying indications in recently updated world energy data
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Monthly Archives: August 2023
Fossil Fuel Imports Are Already Constrained
The big question for any fuel is, “Can consumers afford to pay a high enough price to cover all the costs involved in getting the fuel from endpoint to endpoint, at the time it is needed?”
Citizens become very unhappy if the cost of winter heat becomes extremely expensive. They demand subsidies and rebates from the government, in order to keep costs down. This is a sign that prices are too high for the consumer.
Both coal and natural gas are also heavily used in manufacturing. Their prices vary greatly from location to location and from time to time. If coal or natural gas prices rise in a particular location, the cost of manufactured goods from that location will also tend to rise. These higher prices will particularly hurt a manufacturing country, such as Germany, because its manufactured goods will become less competitive in the world marketplace. Continue reading
Posted in Energy policy, Financial Implications
Tagged limits to growth, natural gas prices, peak oil
3,123 Comments
Our Oil Predicament Explained: Heavy Oil and the Diesel Fuel it Provides Are Key
It has recently become clear to me that heavy oil, which is needed to produce diesel and jet fuel, plays a far more significant role in the world economy than most people understand. We need heavy oil that can be extracted, processed, and transported inexpensively to be able to provide the category of fuels sometimes referred to as Middle Distillates if our modern economy is to continue. A transition to electricity doesn’t work for most heavy equipment that is powered by diesel or jet fuel.
A major concern is that the physics of our self-organizing economy plays an important role in determining what actually happens. Leaders may think that they are in charge, but their power to change the way the overall system works, in the chosen direction, is quite limited. The physics of the system tends to keep oil prices lower than heavy oil producers would prefer. It tends to cause debt bubbles to collapse. It tends to squeeze out “inefficient” uses of oil from the system in ways we wouldn’t expect. In the future, the physics of the system may keep parts of the world economy operating while other inefficient pieces get squeezed out. Continue reading
