35 Years of crude prices, via the Wall Street Journal and Barry Ritholtz.
Category: Energy
Fill Your Tank With Vegetable Oil
One day last year, my musician friend Jonathan drove up in a Mercedes. This was odd, since Jonathan is so resolutely counterculture that he once tried recording an album in the woods, without electricity.
His car’s exhaust smelled faintly of french fries, and therein lay the explanation: The new Jonathan Richman tour vehicle — an ’84 300D Turbo — was running on vegetable oil-derived biodiesel fuel as he and his drummer crisscrossed the nation in it, a deep fryer on wheels.
I was intrigued: Biodiesel comes from renewable resources. It’s made from soybeans, corn or other oil crops, saving America’s farmers. Or it comes from recycled kitchen grease, saving America’s sewers. It pollutes remarkably less than petroleum fuel, and could potentially make the U.S. energy self-sufficient, freed from bargaining with dictators and terror-sponsor states.
Investing in Ethanol
The current excitement over ethanol derives from research that has cut the cost of converting nonfood plant matter like grasses and wood chips into alcohol. Mr. Khosla says he believes that such ethanol, called cellulosic ethanol, will eventually be cheaper to produce than both gasoline and corn-derived ethanol.
Can investors whose pockets are not as deep jump into the ethanol market? Yes, but they are taking a big risk. Picking long-term winners among the companies that make ethanol — or, for that matter, develop other alternative energy technologies — is a very uncertain business. The few public companies that focus on ethanol are typically unprofitable. Pacific Ethanol, for example, has not yet had a profitable quarter and will not until at least the fourth quarter, when its first plant is scheduled to begin production, Mr. Langley said.
Interesting photo, new Janesville assembled Chevy Tahoe SUV with Vinod – a prominent Silicon Valley VC.
Grow Your Own Oil, US
Researchers hoping to ease America’s oil addiction are turning sawdust and wood chips into bio-oil, a thick black liquid that could become a green substitute for many petroleum products.
Bio-oil can be made from almost any organic material, including agricultural and forest waste like corn stalks and scraps of bark. Converting the raw biomass into bio-oil yields a product that is easy to transport and can be processed into higher-value fuels and chemicals.
“It is technically feasible to use biomass for the production of all the materials that we currently produce from petroleum,” said professor Robert C. Brown, director of the Office of Biorenewables Programs at Iowa State University.
A Magic Way to Make Billions
Donald Barlett and James B. Steele:
The wording is so bland and buried so deep within a 324-page budget document that almost no one would notice that a multibillion-dollar scam is going on. Not the members of Congress voting for it and certainly not the taxpayers who will get fleeced by it. And that is exactly the idea.
With Washington reeling from the Abramoff lobbying scandal and Republicans and Democrats alike pledging to crack down on influence peddling, with one lawmaker already gone from Capitol Hill because he traded favors for cash, you’re probably guessing this isn’t the best time for members of Congress to dispense a fortune in favors to their friends.
Guess again.
Peak Oil?
Peak oil is real, but there are strategies available to mitigate its effect, IF we start in time. Dr. Hirsch is the Senior Energy Program Advisor for SAIC and past chairman of the Board on Energy and Environmental Systems at the National Academies.
Do Americans Support a Gas Tax?
“A significant number would go along with an increase if it reduced global warming or made the United States less dependent on foreign oil, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll.
The nationwide telephone poll, conducted Wednesday through Sunday, suggested that a gasoline tax increase that brought measurable results would be acceptable to a majority of Americans.
Neither the Bush administration nor Democratic Party leaders make that distinction. Both are opposed to increasing the gasoline tax as a means of discouraging consumption, although President Bush, in recent speeches, has called for the development of alternative energy to reduce dependence on foreign oil.”
BMW’s Turbo Steam Fuel Saving Concept
MW engineers are working on a steam-powered auxiliary drive system that reduces fuel consumption by up to 15 per cent and boosts performance at the same time, the car maker said.
The ‘Turbosteamer’ concept applied to a 1.8 litre, four-cylinder petrol engine recycles the waste heat in the exhaust gases and cooling system.
In tests, the Turbosteamer produced 13 additional hp in performance with 80 per cent of the energy in the exhaust gases recycled, according to the manufacturer.
The Energy Outlook Changes
Is Energy’s Future Sustainable?
In his Harvard Lecture, Simmons explores the ramifications of peak energy (not just oil). The potential for world conflict is there, but it doesn’t have to be inevitable. (5 MB PDF – republished with permission)