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>Once EROEI dips below 1, price is negative. It becomes impossible to extract the oil profitably. This is not strictly true: First, non-fuel use accounts for 5
by i_am_proteus 8y ago
>Once EROEI dips below 1, price is negative. It becomes impossible to extract the oil profitably.
This is not strictly true:
First, non-fuel use accounts for 5-10% of oil use.
Second: As long as oil offers higher-density (fuel energy, thrust-to-weight, &c.) mobile power generation than alternatives, it can be profitable. Id est: if it's cheaper to extract and refine a barrel of oil (perhaps with renewables) than to produce the equivalent biofuel, the oil could be produced profitably.
- beat 8y agoEh. If it takes two barrels of oil to extract one barrel of oil, where do you get the energy for extraction? Then you're using solar/wind/nuclear to pump oil. At some point, it's cheaper to just synthesize.
- i_am_proteus 8y agoMaybe. Cf. every mineral that's mined. Energy expended to extract a resource.
- beat 8y agoNot the same. You don't use up the iron you mine in the mining process. That's what EROEI < 1 is, unless you get the energy input from some other source. And since anything that's in petroleum can be synthesized from simple molecules like water and CO2, given enough energy...
- dredmorbius 8y agoAircraft and shipping require hydrocarbon-level fuel energy densities by mass and/or volume. There are no, or exceedingly few, substitutes. Petroleum consumption will, can, and has proceeded well beyond EROEI 1:1 parity within such uses -- see Germany's WW2 Fischer-Tropsch process. The correct measure here is total economic return. Fuel synthesis is negative EROEI.
- osullivj 8y agoBrent crude, from the UK North Sea fields, is much lighter than Iraqi or Saudi crude. I'm guessing Norwegian crude is similar. Light crude is too "good" for fuel use; I believe it's used for plastics.