Saudi lollipop is our sour grapes

or 3 months ago when OPEC announced cuts. you know, when KSA showed their lack of respect for Biden and was going to spike oil prices

reality is raise the price too high and it leads to demand destruction. old adage still true, the solution to high prices is high prices

 

which patents are those?
fusion?
next gen nuclear
battery storage
next gen solar
I'm just a casual observer but I am reading a lot more new inventions in all of the above happening in the US than in China but maybe they keep their advance science breakthroughs quiet.

 

You realize that we currently export more oil than we import, right?

Also, you might want to realize that the UK actually has a pretty substantial domestic supply from the North Sea.

Finally, you might want to realize that pricing a global commodity happens at a global level not at a national level.

 

fyi Venezuela has the world's largest reserves and haven't even begun to tap them. and current shale drilling is recovering less than 10% of the oil in place so future advances will be able to increase recovery there. and there are so many fields off of African that haven't even been explored yet since it isn't profitable to do so right now. then we can talk about deepwater oil where the capex to generate it is so high that the payoff has a longer term horizon so it isn't being tapped. Norway production w \as falling off so they went another 50 miles +/- east and documented a massive new field in the North Sea not long ago.

reality is we will have enough alternate fuels and ev's or hydrogen cell powered vehicles long before the worlds oil reserves are depleted

 

Patents may be an overly simplistic word, but they are still leading the way overall.

https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/re...inning-the-race-for-clean-energy-technology/

 

But most of that are counted in the known reserves presumably?

 

no, only recoverable oil is counted, and recovery techniques are improving all the time, and the work KNOWN is critical. Known reserves are being added all the time. this ends before shale became a big thing but you get the idea

World Crude Oil Reserves by Year (Billion Barrels) (indexmundi.com)

 

the upside is they are building a lot of yesterdays tech that will be obsolete in 5 - 10 years but I'm glad they are investing so much in renewables. WIth little to no known recoverable oil and gas in CHina (hard to believe) they didn't have much choice but if you ask me who is leading the race to invent and patent next gen energy production, it isn't china

and the article is 20 months old. the pace of invention right now is staggering so 20 months might as well be 20 years wrt tech

 

We know, but when we say that it makes a complete mockery of our presidency, and office holder. We know it's not him. He's even said that he does NOT get to make any decisions on his own... he intimated that others are doing that for him.

 

We still export oil like we did when Trump was our POTUS? That's great news... then why is gasoline and diesel fuel so expensive here in the U.S.A.? Are we exporting coal too? Yes, the very definition of hypocrisy coming from the climate communists Dems.

The Dems/climate communists must think that oil will be burned on another planet.

 

Yes, we do. To answer your second question, because the global price of oil is expensive. Again, local areas don't set global prices. Private companies drill for oil. They will not sell it cheaply here when they can get a much higher price in another market. As such, local production is not a major determinant of local prices.

 

Gas prices are high now because the oil companies own the refineries. The refinery margining are double or triple what they have historically been. The oil companies are making major bank. I think the answer here is break up the oil companies again both horizontally and vertically.

 

Other than fusion, which is perennially decades away, it's yes to all of them. Nothing is being kept quiet, you probably just only read western centric sources.

On the nuclear front China started construction on their first commercial SMR, the ACP100, 2 years ago. They have a prototype 4th gen reactor based on a HTGR pebble bed design up and running since 2021. They've had their 2nd thorium MSR prototype up and running since last year, another 4th gen design and is considered the holy grail of 4th gen designs. They're also constructing a 4th gen sodium-cooled fast reactor. We have a lot of start ups talking big about building the same reactors China is building or have already built, but that's been the case for many years. It seems that we've been making some good progress in R&D, but that hasn't translate to any concrete construction plans besides the MCRE, but those are still just plans right now and even then they're just plans to build a six-month experimental 4th gen plant.

China completes internal structures of ACP100 SMR building - Nuclear Engineering International

China's demonstration HTR-PM reaches full power : New Nuclear - World Nuclear News

Chinese molten-salt reactor cleared for start up : New Nuclear - World Nuclear News

Idaho Reactor Project Plans to Use Bomb-Grade Uranium

For battery storage Na ion battery will likely be the mainstay for the foreseeable future. Its high availability and low cost compared to Li ion batteries is a big advantage, while its lower energy and volumetric density is irrelevant for grid storage use. On this front both CATL and BYD, who combine for nearly 50% of the world's battery production, have already started mass production. Until production is ramped up, they'll initially be used in EVs, and I believe the first CATL Na-ion battery powered EVs are already on sale. BYD perhaps by the end of the year. I don't know much about BYD's chemistry, but the CATL chemistry also manages to avoid using Ni in the cathode and uses PBA instead. The advantage of this is that getting rid of the relatively rare/costly Li but not getting rid of the similarly rare/costly(though with a much better developed supply chain) Ni is only solving half the problem. Using iron-based PBA solves the whole problem. Again, we have start ups talking big about building the same thing, and appear to have made some good progress in R&D, but that's yet to translate to any mass production plans. Seeing a trend here?

CATL and BYD to use sodium-ion batteries in EVs this year - electrive.com

Vanadium redox/flow batteries may also be in the mix. They don't have the same power output as Na/Li-ion batteries, but they're extremely stable, long lasting, and low maintenance. We've made some great R&D progress here, the largest battery in the world was built in cooperation with an American company (UniEnergies), yet the battery was built in China and UniEnergies went bankrupt.

First phase of 800MWh world biggest flow battery commissioned in China

For solar, the most widely anticipated innovation is the silicon-perovskite tandem cell panel. On this front, the largest solar manufacturer in the world, Longi, is on the forefront. They just announced 2 weeks ago that their perovskite panel achieved an efficiency of 31.8%, which is the 14th time since 2021 that they've broken the world record in efficiency. The issue with perovskite panels though is their longevity. At least as of last year a 25% loss in efficiency in 9 months was considered a great outcome, so we're probably still quite a ways away from getting working panels.

LONGi Announces the New Efficiency of 31.8% for Perovskite/Crystalline Silicon Tandem Solar Cells Based on Commercial CZ Silicon Wafers

Lab-made perovskite solar panel loses 25% of efficiency over 9-month period

Lastly for fusion, it's so far from commercialization that it's not useful to compare where each project is at. I'll just say that some of the recent reports about achieving or nearly achieving break-even is a bunch of misleading crap. The calculation is based on energy output / energy input, but the trick here is that the energy input only counts the laser output that sustains the fusion reaction. It doesn't count the electricity required to generate that laser output or the electricity required to maintain the plasma fuel, among other things. Also, the energy output is heat, and the efficiency when converting it to electricity will likely be ~50% (it's in the mid-30s in Gen 3 nuclear reactors, but with higher temperatures it should be more efficient). When you calculate the overall efficiency it's actually closer to just 1% right now, far, far, FAR from achieving break even. This video by a physicist helps explain it.



Overall, besides Chinese advances in tech, it's quite clear that their abilities to manufacture and scale is a major challenge for us. CATL and BYD combine for nearly 50% of the world's battery manufacturing capacity, Longi accounts for a third of the world's solar panel manufacturing, and China is building more nuclear reactors than the rest of the world combined. Even if we can keep up tech-wise, it'll be extremely difficult to commercialize the tech. Building a supply chain is costly and time consuming, if we want to be competitive the time to start investing is NOW. Cut red tape, invest in a manufacturing workforce instead of letting the services industry suck up all our manpower, and stop wasting political capital in culture wars or money in adventures abroad.

 

Nuclear is the only option IMO. When will everyone want to charge their cars? At night, when they get home from work. Right after the sun goes down.

 

Oh really?? So you maintain that fossilization ALL occurred at the exact same time? Sure. Now we can have a reasonable debate about whether/how much faster it is being consumed than new oil is naturally occurring, but please spare us the lib horseshit that it will all be gone soon.

The problem with Liberal ideology is that some people are old enough to remember all of your past lies.

 

A much, much simpler answer would be for the governments is the US to have allowed refineries to be built in a reasonable time frame and at a reasonable cost. The EPA and various local governments have been standing in the way of that for decades.

 

Lol, I don’t think the liberals here would claim me, but it is interesting that you need to frame it as an enemy argument to try and dismiss it.
Meantime, who claimed it all formed at the same time? It formed over 250 million years (most of it when there was less oxygen and easier to form), and we took a good chunk of it out in 100. So yes, unless you are saying a replenishment rate of 1/250 millionth a year is good, it is essentially finite.
And define “soon”? It doesn’t have to be even close to all gone before prices start spiking. So the impacts will hit us well before it’s actually used up. Heck, the price has already gone up 5 fold in the last twenty five years for a variety of reasons, and we keep holding on to it. What will it do in the next 25? Do we want to just “hope” we don’t get burned too badly?
It will also take us several decades minimum to truly wean off of it, so say it is 100 years out and not the 2053 date alarmists claim, with the expected price shocks as it starts to go, we would want to be off decades before that. You put the infrastructure and that together and we are already close to the window we need to be working on it.
So again, why not start now and get out in front of the eventual solution and not behind it? What is so evil about planning ahead, being ahead of the game and not behind, gaining monetary, geopolitical and infrastructure wins in the process? Is it simply because Al Gore was the GW guy? If anything, getting in front of China, getting away from autocrats, self sufficiency etc. are conservative values. Not sure how it got so twisted. The worst case is more oil is found, and we don’t care because we don’t need it, nor do we need the Saudis, Venezuelans, Russians etc., which sounds like a pretty good worst case to me.

 

Perhaps but competition is the answer to every economic issue. Well almost every issue.

 

Because we don’t have one eventual solution. There are many, including the continual use of a good bit of fossil fuel and a massive investment in nuclear. I’m fine with technology and have 100% confident that it and the free market will develop solutions as they’re needed. I’m not, on any way fine, with propaganda as to the nature/severity of a problem and government forced solutions.

We are nowhere near ready for massive conversion to EV’s in battery production(need additional sources than lithium), battery disposal, and power production for charging capacity.

How is a massive reliance on supply constrained lithium going to be an improvement over reliance on oil?

 

No question about it, for the USA to solve it's energy issues it must be receptive to ideas on all fronts.

I'm fine with technology too, still hold out hopes humanity is inching closer to Nuclear Fusion which seems to be that "magic bullet" we are hoping for.

I wholeheartedly DISAGREE with your contention that science is "propoganda" - The scientific method, as far as I am concerned, is 1,000 X better for resolving the energy crises as compared to putting your marbles in with the likes of Trump or BP.

The extraction of oil is unbelievably expensive, and science has proven that this energy source is catastrophically damaging to human health and of course to the environment.