peak oil
 

Does anyone know if a study has been performed that looks specifically at the effect peak oil will have on the aviation industry?
I have a read a little bit on this subject and it seems to me that regardless of whether peak oil is reached in the next 5-10 years the future of aviation looks bleak.

:ugh:

I hope some of you can tell me I'm wrong but the more I read on this subject the more I start to wonder if a career as a pilot will serve me well over the next 30 years.
You only have to look at recent events to see the US and UK governments are concerned.

You won't get much response to the subject on this forum, possibly an 'economist's' forum would have more to say.

Nevertheless, it is a very disturbing subject that if true, will effect our industry sooner than we all think. Most people would probably think of it in the same way as most people think on the greenhouse effect, ie, it's all a long way off to worry.

For those that haven't heard of "peak oil", try

http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net

as Spike Milligan would probably have said ......

I don't worry about "Peak Oil" ........

I just don't want to be around when it happens !!!!

I wouldn't get too worried about this. 'Experts' have been predicting for centuries (starting with Malthus) that the world's about to run out of this or that commodity. When you look back at the figures over a suitably long period, it almost always turns out that the real price of the commodity has dropped.

In the case of oil, there's more of it sitting in Canada (to name but one country) than has been extracted in the history of the world to date. Trouble is, it's in the form of oil shale and right now the cost of extraction exceeds the market value of the product. At some point in the future either the cost of oil will rise or the technological cost of extraction will reduce and - hey presto - the world has another century's worth of oil production available.

Thought for the day: "the stone age did not come to an end for lack of stone".

High oil prices are not a problem.

I have just been involved in negotiating a price for the supply of small quantities of JET A1 and around the best price I can get is US$5.83 per US gallon.

If we can run productive companies with these prices then the USA and other low price countries are just going to have to learn how. You've had it easy for too long.

FWIW

Pax V, the problem isn't so much the amount of oil left in the ground, as it is the rate at which it can be extracted. We've already burned through much of the easily available oil supplies. There's tons of oil left in the oil sands, but it is difficult and energy intensive to extract it, and the production rate (I believe about 500K barrels/day at present) is very slow compared to the consumption rate.

Alternate technologies do exist, however. Aeroplanes are very suitable candidates for Hydrogen fuel, as they essentially fly from gas station to gas station. I have heard that either Airbus or Boeing had a design for a H2 fuelled plane, but can't find a web page about it. I suspect, due to the difficulties in fuel storage, and energy density of the fuel, that a plane would look somewhat like the one Airbus uses to ferry around their fuslage sections, in order to cope with the gas volume needed. Turbines are already in use with natural gas as a fuel, so some small tweaks there, and we're off to the races. The other fuel possibility, I would guess, would be BioDiesel. Already in use in cars, no storage problems, and we can use the current fuel infrastructure. I haven't found any information yet as to whether it would work in a turbine engine - but I'm sure that the manufacturers have/are looking into it.

I rather despair for research into all of this, however, while people who are beholden to the oil industry are in power in the largest energy-user in the world.

Hello All.

I am not a regular poster on these forums but may have something useful to add on this occasion. I have done a little browsing on this topic from the point of view of a layman pilot concerned about the future of the industry. I managed to stumble across a paper published by a research unit at Imperial College. The paper explores energy options available for aviation and seems to conclude that most biofuels will be too expensive, while hydrogen powered aircraft will require major airframe modifications to accomodate cryogenic storage tanks. They do mention a process - Fischer Tropsch conversion - which is used by Sasol in South Africa to produce hydrocarbon fuels from coal. It seems possible that this process can also be used to convert biomass (some woods, energy rich grasses etc) into kerosene at prices that may be viable if further development reduces the production costs. The fuel produced would also be carbon neutral. Most of the paper is way over my head, and I may have completely misinterpreted it, but those with bigger brains than mine may enjoy reading it.

I found it at - http://www.iccept.ic.ac.uk/a5-1.html - entitled "The Potential for Renewable Energy Sources in Aviation"

With luck, I may be able to frighten the travelling public for years to come.

Cheers

Revisit

Albeit somewhat as an aside - see here for some background on South Africa's SASOL.

Their refining of fuel oil(s), etc, from low grade coal is described in 'technologies & processes’ and ‘sasol advanced synthol process’

Clever stuff.

PVs comments about shale oil are spot on.

One of the biggest undeveloped oilfields in the world is in Russia. There's stacks of it there, trouble is it will cost about 60 bucks a barrel to remove it from the shale (I believe the process essentially steams the stuff out).

When crude hits, say, 80 bucks a barrel, it'll be commercially viable. June Brent is currently at $37.68 on the IPE.....

Angels: again, it's not a matter of how much is left - it's how fast can we extract it? Currently, Syncrude produces about 13% of Canada's domestic oil. Other companies produce more - but not nearly enough to supply world demand.

I've no specialist knowledge of the oil industry, but I assume that the rate of production could be increased if the economic justification were there (and a lot more R&D would be put into improving the process). Similarly, the other suggestions for replacement fuels will become increasingly attractive as oil prices increase.

Of course, the aviation industry would still have to cope with the increased fuel costs while this transition was happening, but it would be on a level playing field with alternative forms of transport, whose costs would also be increasing.

Oil...
 

Last figures I noticed (about 3 years ago) indicated that the Rab al Khali (empty quarter) of Saudi Arabia contained 8 times as much oil as has presently (to date) been extracted from the Hasa Plain area (where the original discovery was made in 1938.
Yes, the pumps will need to be further down hole, but the area apparently has good reservior pressure, which can be enhanced with gas injection, as is presently being done in the operating fields.
Seismic/log studies were concluded many years ago.

It ain't gonna run out soon folks...all that needs to be done is ensure political stability for the area.

A possibility...maybe.:uhoh:

Dubya has the troops in the right area...more or less.:ooh:

Followed the link for http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net and read the bit about the US needing 50 million barrels/day. Went to www.salaam.co.uk (more specifically, follow this link http://www.salaam.co.uk/themeofthemo..._index.php?l=4) and that showed the US as using 19633 bpd. It seems utterly unreasonable to think that they are going to more than double their consumption at some point in the future!

Anyway, the data on that site makes interesting reading. Iraq does not seem to have massive reserves, so the whole Iraq war for oil theory doesn't seem to hold. Kuwait's data is missing too??

I did a quick calculation and it seems, according to the data on that site that we have 51yrs worth of reserves!!! Not long chaps. Not quite as bad as http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net but we need to start thinking about our futures now. I may as well pack in the ATPL.

Any chance of a justification, HWD ?

Cheers,

K2 :ok:

Just prevent our American friends from driving cars that burn 6 gal/100km and problems are solved... :ok:

OE-LBA-nice idea. We feel vulnerable because of the much larger SUVs and Hummers on both sides of my Toyota sedan (woops- I did not mean to boast), while they talking on a handy/cell, but are too arrogant to use their turn signals.....:uhoh:

However, that would require a very heavy-handed government. Our ancestors (Vorfahren?) wanted a fairly weak central govt. and free enterprise. I guess it is like many complaints about 'zoning' in Bozeman, Montana. Many people around there resent almost any form of government, but look at what can happen with fairly uncontrolled housing development.:oh::confused:

Want to conserve oil ?

Given that the US speed limit is only 50mph, perhaps their industry should be forced to produce vehicles that achieve a consumption of 30mpg or better. The days, when cars were built to guzzle fuel so as to bolster US oil sales, are over.

As for aviation, perhaps it is time to introduce an oil depletion surcharge on all lo-cost seats. There are too many cheap and/or empty seats being flown around the skies, subsidised by desperate 'secondary' airports and their local govenments.

Loco's are creating an artificial demand for air travel, which shouldn't be there.

CG

charterguy--

The 55 (not 50) mph limit was dropped some years ago. Most states have a 65 limit.

Congress has demanded that manufacturer's 'fleets' meet a minimum limit, currently 27.5 mpg. That sounds pretty good, till you realise that light trucks are left out of the calculations, and the manufacturers' lobbyists managed to get SUV's called light trucks for the purpose. The actual fleet averages are a little under 21 mpg, a pretty sorry figure.

Last I heard, there was some hope the SUV's would finally be listed as cars, but the lobbyists (and their campaign money) are sure to have their say.

Also the ever tightening polution controll requirements are a very heavy drag on the MPG that a car achieves.

Cheers
Wino

And all this to give some sharreholders a bigger return.
Must admit, we are a sorry bunch of idiots.
How do I explain this to my son when he's grown up?

- Next thing I do: get in my car to fly an aircraft with a loadfactor of 50%... Hypocrisy is a bad, bad thing-