RETRACTION: Hydrogen is not manufactured by mixing methane with high temperature oxygen. It is made by mixing methane with super-heated steam. Heat gets the ions all excited. Carbon atoms get the hots for two oxygen ions and they run off together. Leaves eight hydrogen atoms as orphans. Why bother I don’t know. If you’re looking for automotive fuel, why not just go with the methane (natural gas)? Vehicles have been running on that stuff for years, and the military is wondering if they could run an F-16 on it. The fuel tank may be a problem.

NEW BOOK ALERT: Found in the library’s ‘New Book’ section: “The Future of Global Oil Production” by Roger D. Blanchard. Blanchard is a professor of chemistry, and has produced a volume jam-packed with petroleum data displaying the history of production of most of the globe, plus a couple of splendid terms to utilize:.

EPR (Energy Profit Ratio) = Energy Content of Fuel/Energy Needed to Obtain Fuel If that ratio is less than 1.0 it’s a certain loser as far as energy is concerned. Some proposals for alternate fuels have EPRs of less than 1. The EPR for petroleum can be up around 100.

Note: For excellent EPR calculations, go to Murdoch University (which is in Australia)
and view their splendid course material on energy. I got there by asking Google for ‘energy profit ratio’ which lead me to a wwwistp.murdoch.edu followed by a bunch more, but trying to duplicate that from my keyboard didn’t work. Google is quicker in any case. The Murdoch document is much more extensive than just EPR, and it’s all very worth while…

Enthalpy = energy derived from combustion of fuels, measured at the molecular level. That’s somewhat similar to volume. Trust me, there’s a lot more energy in gasoline than in hydrogen or methane. You won’t go nearly as far on whatever the equivalent of a gallon of gas might be.

Looking at Blanchard’s hundreds of charts from around the world can be depressing. A real forest of Hubbertian curves.. A very few curves are still rising but many, many more are in decline. Blanchard is kind enough to detail the sources of his data. One could presumably replicate his efforts by backtracking to his sources. The volume is available for $29.95 from http://www.amazon.com

The Energy Information Administration of the U.S. Department of Energy has a web site, http://www.eia.doe.gov. EIA/DOE provides hundreds of spreadsheets offering year-by-year, or in more recent years month-by-month data from oil regions in the U.S. and around the world – a complete production history for the U.S. but somewhat limited for world production (in terms of earlier years). The EIA/DOE information can be downloaded as .pdf files which can be viewed on-screen or printed, or in spreadsheet form. I downloaded the .xls version, which is Microsoft’s Excel format, and which slipped effortlessly – almost — into my Quattro..

Another splendid source, the one employed by Kenneth Deffeyes is the “Energy Statistics Source Book” by the editor of the Oil and Gas Journal, published by Pennwell. It’s nearly 600 pages of nothing but statistics – big pages, 8.5 x 11. Annual U.S. production from 1859 to 1994 (I was using a 1995 edition) occupied a single page. Also note – it’s $295 from http://www.amazon.com, and last published in 1999. For recent years you must go to EIA/DOE – by internet, of course, a source that doesn’t cost anything. Using either EIA/DOE, the Source Book, or both I can (and have) run the Deffeyes formula for the U.S. from the beginning back in 1859 through last year, and see for myself if he has told the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. He did. Even more importantly, I can use the data to test the claims of people seeking to disprove Hubbert or Deffeyes. For worldwide production neither source provided a complete history – I had to go elsewhere to get cumulative production figures for worldwide oil.

Blanchard frequently listed a couple of sources other than either EIA/DOE and O&GJ. They are geologist Colin Campbell, a Brit with a doctorate from Oxford in geology and wide experience in the oil industry, and Richard Duncan, an electrical engineer and a professor, who became interested in energy (not surprising in an EE). I brought home a copy of Campbell’s 1997 book, “The Coming Oil Crisis”, and found it informative and enjoyable. Campbell was an enthusiastic field geologist when fresh out of Oxford (way back when), and specialized in Carribean and South American oil exploration, working for Texaco. Kind of an Indiana Jones character. Good reading – what it was like to do that work, like traveling the rivers in South American countries by native dugout canoes. And of course getting yellow fever and amoebic dysentery. Also a great amount of insight into the upper reaches of the oil industry, where Campbell himself wound up. He is widely acquainted with the top guys of the major oil companies and can tell you about them. His book also supplies the cumulative oil production figures necessary to apply Deffeyes formulae to whole world oil production.

I supposed in my previous article that the Saudi might have been influenced by Washington in their decision to undercut Soviet prices and flood the market back in 1985. Blanchard’s book gives charts of both Soviet and Saudi production rates during that period. OPEC was formed to compel a more equitable price for the producing countries. (The Six Days and the Yom Kipper wars of ‘67 and ‘73 played a part). They drove oil from about two bucks a barrel to about $17 in the space of a decade. At the same time they curtailed production (embargoed the U.S. in the aftermath of the Yom Kippur war) to protect the price, all of which created a huge inflationary cycle in this country . The Soviets were not members of OPEC – they ramped up their production to take advantage of the new pricing and marketing opportunities. Saudi production went from about 10 mb/d (million barrels per day) to less than 4 mb/d, then in 1985 reversed and bounced back up again. . Soviet production was approximately the reverse of that in appearance, though not numbers. Peter Schweizer’s book “Victory” relates the activities of the Reagan/Thatcher administrations in bringing that about. It was done through intelligence organizations working with King Faud; the usual rules of secrecy applied and not even the U.S. Secretary of Energy knew what was going on and why world oil markets went out of whack. Schweizer was able subsequently to puzzle it out from declassified documents.

Duncan is a kind of one-man-band operation. He collects all available data, massages it, and comes to conclusions. Not happy ones. He foresees a quick and near end of the industrialized period of civilization, with a return to something like early 19th century conditions. I’m dubious about that – we’ve made, and are quite capable of making more – advances into non-fossil fuel sources of energy.

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