Headline: “The World should be worried” quotes the Saudi Aramco in speaking of spare (oil) capacity “There will be no space for any hiccup-any interruption, any unforeseen events any where around the world” Moneywise blog Jing Pan and BTW buy oil stocks! Yeah right.
OH my, not again. Americans have been living in fear over oil shortages for 50 years. How much longer are we going to continue the largest wealth transfer in world history? America pours its money (actually it’s cash). The entire oil consortium relies on a direct pay system. How much longer are we going to provide our hard-earned money to countries that have little or no interest in the future of the good old USA?
This just in: Saudi Arabia suggest using the “petrodollar” in place of the US dollar for oil purchases. Now we got that to worry about.
Time out for an idiom search
To have someone over the barrel means to have someone totally at your mercy. It is a nautical term, which probably derives from two practices: Hanging a drowned, usually unconscious person over a barrel to clear their lungs of water. Using a barrel as a stage for a disciplinary flogging.
You want to live like this?
An old cold war conventional wisdom statement on the 1970s energy crisis was: the country with the last oil reserves on earth will control the planet at the end. This today is a toss-up between the Middle East and Russia. They do have a lot of oil reserves. And they do have OUR tail to pull.
Look at the prosperity of Dubai, housing, massive buildings, the beautiful city all funded by an amazingly simple operation extracting energy in the form of liquid then selling it; cash on the barrel.
Can the USA do the same with sunshine, solar panels and battery storage banks? YES.
West by God Texas had an oil boom. The first settlers to Texas chose all the good land, the tillable land, the cattle sustaining land carpet. These Texas settlers pushed the poor folk out West to the dirt Prairie, the less desirable land, what a costly mistake. The discovery of oil in West Texas boomed their economy and all things associated with it. Massive cities were built, road construction, ocean ports; an entire industry exploded in the phoenix suppling the vehicle that moves man through the economy. The Texas energy industry created new wealth, a modern nation substate and the Dallas Cowboys.
A perennial status symbol in West by God Texas is a thirsty bird movement on a tangled piece of leftover dirt on your own property. This operational oil well looks like hammerhead on stilts rhythmically up and down pumps oil to a designated storage BARREL. Thirsty bird pays about as good as a mutual fund. These low volume oil pumping systems used at the end of the oil wells life pump a few barrels intermittently usually less than 10 barrels a day averaging 2. All run by diesel motors or three phase Chinese electric pump motors. One ironic twist through the story as companies now market solar pumps. There’s even a secondary market of selling leases on the property. The Well owner can get his money up front. The lease holder can get his check quarterly.
These pump wells often we require 2 to 3000 feet of well piping to remove; not a finished product but often a mixture of boiling and hissing gas and a slick green Texas crude. To purchase new sucker pump well rig, go Alibaba and you’ll find one with 1000 feet of piping for $267,995. Plus shipping and setup cost. The argument for the use of sucker pump dinosaurs, there already paid for, capitalized. Debt free and making money is exactly the parallel to connect to the upcoming solar farm industry. The barrel is the battery bank albeit with an upfront cost, but nearly non-stop energy return to the owner with payout over thousands of years. The live-in-the-moment argument, cheap cost of fossil fuel energy gets lost in the facts, it’s not the cost of energy or fuel, it’s no fuel for energy. Get it. To survive long term Earth humans will require an eternal energy supply, NOT NUCLEAR, the sooner the better.
The big obstacle to the scenario of renewable energy solutions especially those requiring solar panels and battery banks is the cost benefit ratio when compared to low cost and capitalized hydrocarbon power plant. Now I would ask that you go back and reread the first paragraph. The ramping up and the convergence of renewable energies combining with the established power plants is essential to the future of the United States of America. The transition to the battery storage is essential to the security of the United States.
Large scale battery bank storage will facilitate intermittent flow of electrical energy from multiple sources, renewable and traditional without affecting the end user. Keyword here is intermittent flow, smart technology could sync to when electricity is produced not when its needed. The power losses incurred during the transport of electricity through “the grid” are incalculable, literally incalculable, no one has exact numbers and if they did, they don’t want the public to know. 20 % to 30% a good guess, over long distances through resistant technology, maybe 40 to 50%. Cutting this grid cord with the Tesla Australian Megapak battery banks EXAMPLE; stages the energy in reservoirs changing the loss equation and reducing fuel needs. Combined solar ARRAY, battery BANK, electric charging station such as California Frito lay factory establishes new EXAMPLE isolated power plants. Now multiple each of those examples by the thousands and you get the answer.
Combine large scale with small scale and Energy independence would be truly gained.
West by God Texas has another harbinger of the future energy freedom; in the 2021 Texas ice storm leaving millions without power, Ford F150 hybrid owner used there Powerboost onboard generator to power, creating mobile power.
Each Powerboost Truck owning individual had command and control of his energy. God bless Texas.
Adding portable batteries this world saving scenario will be complete. Someday not far in the future Electric vehicle mobile energy humans are going to walk into a Home Depot or Lowe’s and buy a battery storage device like a refrigerator, have it delivered to their home, plug into the home’s breaker box and change the human relationship to electric power. Driving their own portable battery vehicle to a local solar battery station charge up and go home and plug in sunshine.
The home unit would contain not one big battery but thousands of small batteries interconnecting producing a battery bank. Each unit equipped with a BMS: battery management system micromanaging voltage levels, the charges and discharges to ensure a thermodynamic safe battery. These are the goals. The central power plant in which people responsibly control their energy.
When we expand battery storage, it won’t be the price of electricity, it’ll be free electricity gained once the system is capitalized. Lithium batteries will drive this scenario of setting people free, cutting the cord of the utility company and the gas station pump.
Freedom is but a Lithium-Ion battery away and freedom for entire nation. Internal energy control IS the next gold of future. It is a fun time to buy battery stocks.
The US’s transition to electric vehicles could require three times as much lithium as is currently produced for the entire global market, causing needless water shortages, Indigenous land grabs, and ecosystem destruction inside and outside its borders, new research finds.
It warns that unless the US’s dependence on cars in towns and cities falls drastically, the transition to lithium battery-powered electric vehicles by 2050 will deepen global environmental and social inequalities linked to mining – and may even jeopardize the 1.5C global heating target. Guardain article Jan 2023
Translation: It’s time for a lithium boom, IT’S THE RIGHT TECHNOLOGY
The naysayers and the never doers are lining up to block the prosperity of developing countries. Chili and Argentina could use a break. South American economic prosperity can be raised to a level never seen before with proper and responsible lithium mining. Lithium mining will produce a great market for US built mining equipment like Caterpillars and supergood for US manufacturers producing lithium batteries. Ford are you listening?
The current administration conceptualized the reality of being constantly fear manipulated and price gouged “over a barrel” of oil. The US is presently on the precipice of a leap in new technology, battery storage for renewable energy supplies. Stubborn crows have many afraid to look over the edge. (see prior over a barrel idiom)