How about coal? BTU is down 15% YTD and Arch COal is down 12% YTD
On Sun, Feb 9, 2014 at 1:30 PM, Jed Rothwell <[email protected]> wrote: > Blaze Spinnaker <[email protected]> wrote: > > >> It's also not hard to imagine Saudia Arabia and others panic dumping onto >> the market in order to get out while the getting is good, thus driving the >> price of oil down quickly. >> > > An economist told me that is sure to happen with cold fusion. Even a > strong rumor that cold fusion is real might trigger that. > > > James Bowery <[email protected]> wrote: > > I'm not sure where I stored Jed's book on my computer but I presume he >> analyzed the critical point in EROEI where it no longer makes sense to use >> various grades of the in-the-ground reserves even as chemical feedstocks. >> As long as a given grade of reserve remains valuable as chemical >> feedstock, the other valuations will remain to the extent they are related >> to those grades. >> > > I did not do the maths, but I read papers about this, and corresponded > with petrochemical engineers. > > Plus I heard from a group of oil company honchos via Hal Putoff. (They > wanted to know about cold fusion.) See chapter 13: > > http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/RothwellJcoldfusiona.pdf > > Here's the story in a nutshell, from that chapter: > > > ". . . I have discussed cold fusion with petroleum experts several times. > They begin by saying that it will not matter in the long run if the market > for oil fuel dwindles away, because oil has many other uses as an > industrial raw material for things like plastic. Nineteen percent of oil is > used in non-energy applications, but experts say that the market will grow > in the future. When Hal Puthoff met with the presidents of Pennzoil, > Texaco, Marathon, Coastal, and other oil companies, they told him they > would welcome zero-cost energy. He paraphrased them: "When we take our > precious resource out of the ground to make nylons, plastics, drugs, etc., > we don't use up much and we have a large profit margin. When we take it out > of the ground to power automobiles and heat people's homes, it's like > heating your home by burning van Goghs and Picassos. Please take this > burden off our industry. And, by the way, let us buy some to make our > refineries more efficient." With all due respect, I think these executives > were kidding, or this was false bravado. No sane executive would be so > sanguine at the prospect of losing 81% of his business. Why should the oil > company care what the customer does with the product? They get the same $40 > per barrel whether the customer burns the stuff or makes nylon out of it. > In any case, I think these executives are wrong. They will lose 100% of > their business. Oil will be worth nothing. I have asked experts: "Could you > synthesize oil from raw materials? If I gave you carbon and water, could > you make any hydrocarbon petrochemical you like?" They say yes, but it > would take fantastic amounts of energy. It would take as much energy to > synthesize oil from carbon and water as you get from burning the oil, plus > some overhead. This would be the most uneconomical chemical plant on earth. > It does not occur to them, at first, that the plant would be cheap to run > if energy costs nothing. . . ." > > > Actually, they can probably synthesize enough petrochemicals for the > feedstock and lubricant markets from organic sources such as garbage. This > is done already with depolymerization, as I explained in the next > paragraph. This would be a lot cheaper and safer than extracting oil from > the Middle East and shipping it thousands of miles around the world. You > can find local sources of garbage everywhere in the world. The people who > have garbage will pay you to take it from them. You make money at both > ends. The only reason oil is cheaper today is because they extract and ship > so much of it already, they can ship an extra 19% with economies of scale. > Using today's oil industry to produce only 19% of today's output would be a > losing proposition. > > - Jed > >
