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Urea prices increase 270% in 1 year
- pharke 5y agoWe've been here before, set that graph to show the last 15 years. https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/879968 https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/879968
- time_to_smile 5y agoIf HN had a slogan today it would be "this is fine."
- sremani 5y agoShale revolution saved US and indirectly rest of the world of many things. We had one heck of decade with cheap Natural Gas prices in the US and the market adjusted to that. The days of Cheap NG are over given that it is now the preferred input for electricity generation including the peaker plants. The next step is US banning NG and Oil exports which can happen before next presidential election. There are many reasons but the second and third order effects of 'plague' have to run through the system and it would take a decade for all these things to wash through. It is not a coincidence famine follows plague and war follows famine. The bush fires have already started if you are paying attention.
- exhilaration 5y agoIf anyone is curious, the US had a ban on natural gas and oil exports until 2015, when Republicans in Congress passed legislation to overturn the ban, which Obama then proceeded to sign: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-fiscal-oil/congress-kills-u-s-oil-export-ban-boosts-solar-wind-power-idUSKBN0U121U20151219 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-fiscal-oil/congress-k...
- djrogers 5y agoWe've been here before isn't the same thing as 'this is fine'. The earth has had several extinction-level events in it's history - it wouldn't be 'fine' to have one again.
- dev_tty01 5y agoWell, the earth would be fine. The earth would carry on without us and it wouldn't be long until there were no traces of our incredibly short term existence. I've always been amused by "Save the Earth" campaigns. The proper phrase is "Save the Humans."
- phkahler 5y agoI went back the full 30 years. Nice! so a spike in the price of pee is an indicator of financial crisis or instability.
- adamc 5y agoDo we have a theory for why it would be more than a chance correlation?
- nostrademons 5y agoHigh input prices cause inflation, inflation causes central banks to tighten monetary policy, tight monetary policy causes financial crashes as the cash flows of assets are evaluated against higher discount rates.
- jyu 5y agoReal interest rates are still massively negative and will not change much if our total 2022 hikes are 1%. It seems like monetary policy will result in financial crashes (like you allude in that comment) or potentially even more inflation crashing certain assets upwards, or a slight possibility of hyperinflation. Curious what odds you assign for each outcome?
- nostrademons 5y agoPersonally I think the answer is "all of the above", at different timescales. Long-term, I'm betting that it'll end in hyperinflation. But on the short term, asset prices tend to track nominal interest rates better than real ones, because investors have a hard time correctly predicting the effect of inflation on an individual firm's cash flows. (We saw this in the 1970s, where P/Es compressed from about 20 to about 8 in response to higher interest rates, but company profits also rose with inflation, so when interest rates normalized in the 80s stock prices took off.) So if the Fed raises rates, asset prices could crash by 50% or more, which may trigger them to drop rates again, which further pumps inflation and raises stock prices, which causes another cycle of tightening, etc. Expect things to get messy, and less predictable than they were before. The long-term trend is toward a worthless U.S. dollar and infinite stock prices, but there could be a lot of ups and downs before then.
- bitxbitxbitcoin 5y agoI am happy with my pre 2005 diesel truck purchase.
- taneq 5y agoHopefully it's got that old-iron design where you can run it off used fryer oil or basically any other long chain liquid hydrocarbon. There's something to be said for not optimizing your engines too much.
- chaoticmass 5y agoI suspect you're being downvoted because, while your truck may not need this stuff, it will still be affecting you and everyone else since all of the goods we buy get transported on new semi trucks which do use it. However, at the risk of taking downvotes myself, I'll add that I am also happy with my purchase of a non-DEF diesel truck in 2020.
- nradov 5y agoKorea had to airlift in emergency DEF supplies when they ran short. How ironic. https://www.thedrive.com/news/43065/korea-is-airlifting-thousands-of-gallons-of-urea-to-keep-its-diesel-engines-going https://www.thedrive.com/news/43065/korea-is-airlifting-thou... But still, the particulate emissions from diesel engines make them a health hazard. We really ought to phase diesel out in favor of gasoline, natural gas, and electric power.
- vondur 5y agoGas engines don't work very well for the really heavy loads and constant usage. Additionally, modern turbo diesels are pretty darn good with fuel mileage compared to gas powered vehicles. I have a newer turbo diesel mid sized truck, and on the highway I get anywhere from 30-33 MPG, and 28-30 MPG around town.
- Scoundreller 5y agoI knew we shouldn’t have thrown out those jars of urine.
- mbg721 5y agoOther than that, Mrs. Hughes, how did you like the play?
- spamizbad 5y agoI should be more careful. I've been pissing this stuff away my entire life!
- colechristensen 5y agoPrices and taxes on urine were occasionally huge political issues in Ancient Rome.
- benjamir 5y agoMaybe reintroducing a free modern amphora equivalent instead of making people pay and forcing them to waste it in a toilet could help?
- cogburnd02 5y agoInterestingly, elemental phosphorus was originally isolated from urine: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phosphorus#Discovery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phosphorus#Discovery which is funny considering that economists and such are worried that mining phosphorus rock might have a limit soon: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_phosphorus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_phosphorus
- vondur 5y ago"Money Doesn't Stink"
- jihadjihad 5y agoFor anyone curious why this was the case, it's due to a step in wool textile production called "fulling" [0]. Stale human urine was used for the ammonium, which cleaned away dirt and oil from the cloth and made it thicker (fuller). One of the more entertaining episodes in Don Quijote is when he and Sancho are confused by the persistent loud noise made by the hammers in a fulling mill. 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fulling https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fulling
- JumpCrisscross 5y ago
- Forge36 5y agoA similar spike can be seen in August 2008.
- jfzoid 5y agoremember, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pecunia_non_olet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pecunia_non_olet
- georgeecollins 5y agoLumber shot up in price for a few months, and then it came back down. Unless this is sustained I think it is safe to attribute to a supply shock.
- HFguy 5y agoLumber has now gone back up. Very interesting market.
- solarhoma 5y agoLumber has doubled in the last six weeks. Eight foot 2x4’s are now $6 in the Midwest.
- fullstop 5y agoIt went from $4.50 to $6.50 over the course of a week on the east-ish coast. I only needed 20 of them, but it increased the cost of my shelving by $40.
- solarhoma 5y agoI was planning to build a cabin out on my land this summer. But have shelved (pun intended) that idea with the costs.
- iso1631 5y agoBut still down on where it was in May.
- colechristensen 5y agoIt’s a fossil fuel thing, part of synthesis, not just a supply shock (but probably also).
- micromacrofoot 5y agoYeah it's back up... I started planning a home renovation in January 2020 and I've been waiting on prices to come back down :( Starting to consider doing it myself as much as possible to recoup lumber costs with reduced labor costs.
- pdpi 5y agoThese prices are just taking the piss.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- oxymoran 5y agoForget diesel trucks and piss, ya’ll are overlooking that urea is a major component of fertilizer. Higher urea prices->higher fertilizer prices->Less fertilizer demand->less food supply->more suffering via sick and hungry people->more potential for confrontation and war.
- okl 5y agoSame with CO2 -> https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/sep/22/why-is-the-uk-bailing-out-us-co2-supplier-cf-industries https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/sep/22/why-is-the-... https://www.bbc.com/news/explainers-58626935 https://www.bbc.com/news/explainers-58626935
- lettergram 5y agoCO2 also helps plants grow. We should increase the atmospheres CO2 and urea production. More food for all!
- beaconstudios 5y agothere's really more than enough CO2 in the atmosphere right now. The plants aren't struggling for it.
- mrfusion 5y agoCan you point to any research showing what the optimum level of co2 should be for plant growth?
- beaconstudios 5y agoCan you? You're presumably the one arguing, in the face of the majority of climate scientists, that more CO2 is actually a good thing. For what it's worth, no gardener or farmer is having to pump CO2 into the air because their plants are dying.
- vertis 5y agoFor those lacking context: Urea is a component of AdBlue which is used in modern diesel motors. There has been a shortage recently, hence the increase in price.
- okl 5y ago> Urea is a component of AdBlue The other component being water.
- sokoloff 5y agoUrea is a critically important fertilizer. It's a 46-0-0 NPK fertilizer. Diesel Exhaust Fluid is a relatively minor usage compared to nitrogen fertilizer. https://www.ppclubricants.com/understanding-urea-pricing-and-its-relationship-to-def/ https://www.ppclubricants.com/understanding-urea-pricing-and...
- pimlottc 5y agoScanned the title as Uber, was very confused by the comments about pee…
- bell-cot 5y agoI vaguely recall a recent article about teaching pigs or cows (on farms) to urinate and defecate in separate spots, to ease waste management. If the urine is valuable, and the farm is large enough...
- CuriouslyC 5y agoCow poop can be spread and pests eliminated by running birds through the enclosure after you rotate the cows out. If penned animals are using bedding, that bedding can also be directly composted into great fertilizer, no need to pee/poop in separate places.
- PostThisTooFast 5y ago
- mensetmanusman 5y agoLooks like September is when the buffer in the global supply chain ended. At that point people realize what they took for granted and were definitely willing to pay more when it meant shutting down their operation otherwise.
- colechristensen 5y agoEh more like you often apply fertilizer after harvest and thus buy it. There was also a coincident price increase in fossil fuels.
- londons_explore 5y agoThe cause of this is that natural gas prices have dramatically risen in much of the world. For example, in the UK, natural gas has gone up 5x. Urea is made from ammonia which is made from natural gas. The effect of this will mostly impact the agricultural sector, where it is the main component of many fertilisers.
- sagaro 5y agoThe same website has the price for Natural gas for 30 years. https://www.indexmundi.com/commodities/?commodity=natural-gas&months=360 https://www.indexmundi.com/commodities/?commodity=natural-ga... Natural gas prices were a lot higher multiple times in the past, with no corresponding peaks in Urea prices. Just wondering if Natrual gas is the sole reason or if something else also is at play.
- fasteddie31003 5y agoThis a huge venerability in our supply chain. If we run out of DEF urea, trucking will grind to a halt. I hope engine makers like Cummins and Detroit have contingency plans where they could release a software patch for their engines that would temporarily bypass the DEF requirement. However, I doubt they have any contingency plan and this is actually a huge venerability that I guarantee our enemies know of.
- yardie 5y agoIt's an open secret you can code out DEF on some diesel VWs. The older TDI Touaregs that were fixed during Dieselgate are nearing the end of their 120k mile warranty and owners are recoding the ECU to ignore DEF warnings rather than maintain or repair them. I'm sure the same could be done for Cummins and Detroit.
- selimthegrim 5y agoUh, doesn’t the state plug into their ECU for emissions inspections?
- yardie 5y agoIf you mean the poorly engineered OBD port most don’t. They may run an exhaust probe and visual inspection of the CEL and safety equipment.
- kragen 5y agoAs long as price controls aren't imposed, there's no danger of a DEF shortage. The price has gone from US$250/tonne (25¢/kg) to US$1000/tonne (US$1/kg). Trucks consume perhaps 1 kg of urea per 100 km. Even at US$10/kg it wouldn't grind trucking to a halt, just raise the price a little.
- djrogers 5y agoAdding $0.10/KM (side note, why are we doing math with USD and metric distances?) isn't raising the price 'a little' - it's over a 5% increase in trucking costs. Do you think most trucking operations have much more than a 5% margin in their businesses right now, or that if they did, they'd just eat such a huge increase? [1] (warning - math required, source is in $/Mile) https://www.paragonrouting.com/en-us/blog/post/want-optimize-your-fleet-know-your-average-trucking-cost-mile/ https://www.paragonrouting.com/en-us/blog/post/want-optimize...
- 1234letshaveatw 5y agoCan it be extracted as part of waste water processing?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- AtlasBarfed 5y agoSo are all the monopolies in our global supply chain waking up to how they can wring profits and ... even better ... government subsidies that are long lasting and function as barriers to entry for competitors?
- wcoenen 5y agoIt was already clear in September that this was going to happen, when fertilizer plants started to shut down because of the high gas prices[1]. (context: Natural gas is used to produce ammonia via the Haber process, and the ammonia is in turn used to produce ammonium nitrate and urea, which are used as fertilizer.) I already commented on it back then[2]. I wonder why those events took a while to appear in the urea price? [1] https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/sep/16/fears-for-uk-recovery-as-record-energy-prices-shut-fertiliser-plants https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/sep/16/fears-for-u... [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29113533#29116895 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29113533#29116895
- iSnow 5y ago>I wonder why those events took a while to appear in the urea price? Probably because big urea producers have longer-term contracts for gas and the price hike would only occur after a set period. Chemical plants buy very little spot.
- stult 5y ago> I wonder why those events took a while to appear in the urea price? They didn't. The futures price started climbing in September. https://www.barchart.com/futures/quotes/JC*1 https://www.barchart.com/futures/quotes/JC*1
- derbOac 5y agothat graph suggests urea prices are already going down?
- hn_throwaway_99 5y agoThere is a great quote I heard once that many people don't realize: "Modern agriculture is the conversion of the energy in fossil fuels to energy in food we can eat". That is, the vast majority of nitrogen-fixation for fertilizers is done using natural gas or other petroleum product: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ammonia_production https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ammonia_production
- UncleOxidant 5y agoCouldn't we extract all the nitrogen we need from sewage?
- ivarv 5y agoI don't know if we could get all the required nitrogen to sustain our current agricultural methods, but there are definitely people working towards normalizing the capture and reuse of the nutrients in urine. Our current practice of polluting waterways with our urine is a travesty though, and it behooves us to process our 'waste' in a more regenerative way. See https://richearthinstitute.org https://richearthinstitute.org for more.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- time_to_smile 5y agoI'm surprised by how little people understand the relationship between fossil fuels (not just energy) and global food production. The primary reason that Malthus was wrong in his predictions about population growth and food supply isn't because of "science" it's because of fossil fuels. This wouldn't be an issue if fossil fuels were unlimited in supply and didn't have very severe externalities in their unrestricted usage. People don't like to talk about what the food supply looks like under a zero emissions scenario with our current nitrogen productions methods. edit: This comment getting quickly downvoted is objective evidence for my argument that "People don't like to talk about..." There's nothing controversial in this comment. In a world without fossil fuels we very likely would have seen Malthus's predictions come to be, fossil fuels are obviously a limited resource and their usage has extreme externalities. I get that people are scared, but it's still sad to see a community of otherwise curious people start to break down when they see facts that make them uncomfortable.
- devoutsalsa 5y agoMy hobby of peeing into bottles & storing them is about to pay off.
- lumost 5y agoCurious how these big input cost swings translate to final product costs. We're seeing steady news reports for individual components such as SemiConductors oil and other costs skyrocketing by triple digits. Presumably downstream the costs are partially eaten by wage declines, profit margin shrinkage, supply reserves, and other costs which aren't spiking. I wish I had access to an approximate Soviet style planning machine to simulate the outcome and time delay to cost increases. We're probably still eating the food grown with last years food and fertilizer prices.
- Keysers0ze 5y agoAside from agriculture, demand for urea has also increased due to recent introduction to maritime applications. International Maritime Organisation - Tier III emmission certification require lowered emissions in (S)ECA areas. Urea injection in exhaust lines convert SOx to CO2. "HUG-units" long used in greenhouses to also use the exhaust of generators used for lighting/heating as additional CO2 source. These same units are now being slapped on to seagoing vessels that of length under Class (Lloyds/Bureau Veritas etc.). Sidenote: Service engineers and subsequent calibration tools are fully booked at this time. Good business to be had.
- mrfusion 5y agoAt what point would it be cost effective to sell urine? (Asking for a friend.)
- mrfusion 5y agoI wish we’d invest more in research to make all crops nitrogen fixing like beans and clover. It seems like we’d be close to the right level of technology.
- throwawaymanbot 5y ago
- taneq 5y agoThis is fine. I'm okay with the events that are unfolding currently. :S
- UncleOxidant 5y agoThere's a local sewage treatment plant that's producing fertilizer[1] and selling it. Why couldn't this be done on a large scale? [1] https://www.cleanwatergrow.com/ https://www.cleanwatergrow.com/
- tastyfreeze 5y agoAll of our sewage waste treatment could provide two things methane and fertilizer. Most treatment plants are aerobic so they don't produce methane. But, every treatment plant could provide fertilizer if regulations in the area allowed it and people bought it. I would like to see a shift to anaerobic sewage treatment to produce methane for fuel everywhere that humans live. I have been thinking about what it would take to convert my septic tank to an anaerobic digester for many months. I would love to replace my propane supply with methane produced from my own shit. On a larger scale I believe that my remote community could similarly replace a large portion of the imported propane with natural gas if we had an anaerobic sewage treatment plant. https://www.veolia.com/anz/our-services/our-services/energy-services/waste-energy/biogas/biogas-wastewater-treatment-plants https://www.veolia.com/anz/our-services/our-services/energy-... Edit: an EPA link on digester basics https://www.epa.gov/agstar/how-does-anaerobic-digestion-work https://www.epa.gov/agstar/how-does-anaerobic-digestion-work
- PTOB 5y ago"Harry King wasn't the hero we needed. He was the hero we deserved."
- giantg2 5y agoAt least adding it as a yeast nutrient doesn't require much. Should have limited impact to my wine making.
- shtopointo 5y agoWhat's there stopping supply from catching up to demand?
- xwowsersx 5y agoThis is because European gas prices spiked.
- PostThisTooFast 5y ago
- Normille 5y agoThey're taking the piss!