The effect of high oil prices on aviation

[Four1oh]

to the detriment of everyone else? Heard about the riots in mexico yet? It's causing the cost of the available food supply to skyrocket due to lack of supply and extra demand. Mexico was just the beginning.

There's nothing wrong with farmers doing business, but for the sake of collecting votes? Dupe Joe Public into thinking this is a good idea when it's clearly not?

BTW the NDP got kicked out of my province last night too! Hmm, where could you be from? So nice to see a Sask Party majority.

[goates]

Well, if we could just get a few fusion powerplants built and switch to electric cars, there would be plenty of oil left for aircraft to use. At least until a viable alternative for them comes along.

Now if we could just get governments to spend more on fusion power research. It could solve a lot of other problems too. Like purifying sea water for areas with little or no fresh water, such as LA.

[Four1oh]

once again, where's the big business lobbyists?

[Koizie1]

Our only hope in the long term may be some form of biofuel, or in the much much longer term hydrogen.

But if there's an oil crisis looming (and there may not be) it would seem to me biofuel would be better suited for use in ground transportation where high performance is not so essential (i.e. the extra weight of ethanol hurts a long distance plane way more than a city vehicle).

This would leave us aviation types with a shaky hope that with the increased use of biofuels on the ground, a greater portion of a barrel of crude oil could be used for producing jet fuel.

"Please mr. car manufacturer, please make your car more green so we can fly our planes" - kinda thing

[goldeneagle]

Actually, our only hope, is to hope folk learn to do arithmetic.

Price a barrel of oil a year ago, in $cdn, euro, and $us. Price that same barrel today, in $cdn, euro, and $us. Then understand, that spot market prices for oil are quoted in $us.

Exercise for the reader, determine, is the price of oil actually going up dramatically, or, is the value of the us dollar going down ? Hint, recent exchange rate headlines are a big clue.

In april of this year, a liter of auto fuel cost $1.27 at a station up the street. Today, that same station, it's $0.99. Both prices quoted in $cdn. Avgas has followed similar trends, just slightly higher numbers. Another exercise for the reader, measured in $cdn, calculate the rise in gas prices from april to today. Part two, explain this 'rise' in relation to the rise in global spot market prices for a barrel of crude over the same period.


The biggest effect of the constant headlines regarding high oil prices, and folks reaction to those headlines, we learn who can, and who cannot, do simple currency conversion arithmetic.

An interesting aside, currency conversion arthmetic is basically the same as fuel consumption arthmetic. When pilots who buy fuel in $cdn start to worry about oil prices quoted in $us, I start to realize why there is so much conversation on the board regarding fuel exhaustion. If currency conversion is an issue, then, fuel consumption calcs will be a similarily difficult problem....

[North Shore]

Golden, you are of course, absolutely correct, that the current price of oil is largely a consequence of a falling US dollar. However, that doesn't negate the long-term un-sustainability of burning ~ 88 million barrels of a non-renewable oil resource every single day...and thus, this discussion, while perhaps premature, is entirely apropos, and not worthy of your simple dismissal by implying that we can't do math well..

[North Shore]

a greater portion of a barrel of crude oil could be used for producing jet fuel

Any one in the oil patch want to comment on this? It was my understanding that the 'crack' of crude oil in a refinery left us with a fairly fixed ratio of diesel to gasoline to naptha to tar etc...

[v6g]

Yes, golden eagle, it's true that much of the rise in the oil price is directly linked to the fall in the US dollar price.

But, over the longer term, it can't be denied that the world is facing a severe energy crunch over the next decade:-
- Production in over 60% of all oil producing nations has peaked and is now declining (according to the BP Statistical Review of World Energy).
- Production in all of the non-OPEC "mega" fields (Norway, US, UK, etc…) has peaked and is now declining (from BP statistical review again)
- Within 4-5 years all non-OPEC production will be in terminal decline (according to the IEA).
- OPEC stated reserves are massively over estimated. None of their major oil companies are listed on western stock exchanges and so their figures are unsubstantiated.
- For every 4 barrels of oil the world currently consumes, we discover one.
- In 2006, the worlds largest oil companies increased their exploration budgets by 45% (to over $400 billion) but reserves only increased by 2%. (Source: John S Herold Inc - Oil & Gas Analysts).

For anybody whose primary income comes from aviation, now is the time to be thinking about your "plan B".

[goldeneagle]

Golden, you are of course, absolutely correct, that the current price of oil is largely a consequence of a falling US dollar. However, that doesn't negate the long-term un-sustainability of burning ~ 88 million barrels of a non-renewable oil resource every single day...and thus, this discussion, while perhaps premature, is entirely apropos, and not worthy of your simple dismissal by implying that we can't do math well..

Actually, go do the math on most of the 'alternatives', and you will see, it is indeed a function of 'cant do math well'.

As an example, take the herlded 'hydrogen hiway' that's been in the news as of late. For some silly reason, folks seem to think hydrogen is an abundant source of energy. It isn't, it's just a different way of storing energy. Where does commercial quantity hydrogen come from ? It comes from [drum roll] a gas well. Thats right, commercial hydrogen production today, comes from extracting the H from hydrocarbon gas. It does NOTHING for the 'greenhouse' folks except MOVE the bad emissions from the cars, to the processing plant. Altho many would _like_ to think commercial quantity hydrogen comes from electrolysis, that's not how it works. The reason is simple, takes to much electricity, becomes to expensive, and in most parts of the world, that electricity still comes from coal burning plants, so, yet again, the 'greehouse' effect is just moved. After adding the inefficiency of multiple conversions, and the horrible problem of storing hydrogen prior to use, it actually becomes a net negative in both the terms of cost, and in terms of greenhouse emissions when compared to gasoline, and actually following the entire process end to end. burn gas, burn coal, same net result, but, by the time you get 1 joule of energy to the drive train of a car, the gas route is both cheaper, and has less emission than trying to store that energy as hydrogen along the way.

Now look at the bio diesel options. It makes for great tv to show some couple in a small town taking leftover frying fat from a restaurant, and converting it to biodeisel to run a pickup truck. BUT, in that whole process, from end to end, they tend to ignore the cost (time/effort/fuel) to go pick up the stuff initially, then the cost (time/electricity) used in the conversion. In an area where electricity is cheap, and has little/no emissions during production (most of canada), the entire process actually is cheaper and more efficient than typical fuel supply channels. In an area where electricity comes from coal, and costs twice as much as it does here, the efficiency is lost. On a commercial scale, if you account in the time cost of sending somebody to pick up the stuff prior to processing, it becomes even more expensive than traditional fuel sources. Dont believe the math, well, it's not hard to figure it out. If indeed converting and burning the leftover fat from a restaurant was cost effective, an operation like CN would have LONG AGO made a deal with somebody like McDonalds and we would see trains running on the stuff. Rising oil prices will some day cause this to happen, but, the price of bulk diesel in large commercial quantities will have to be more than twice what it is today for this to come to fruition. If the price of oil is indeed a supply and demand thing, it will happen, when the price makes it efficient, not before.

If we are indeed running out of oil, no big deal. Society and the economy will react. The free markets will find other alternatives, when they become cost effective. That will happen sooner rather than later if indeed the supply is truely short. If it isn't, then the switch will wait, until the economics make it viable. In either case, the switch will happen when the math shows, it's cheaper to change, and not before.

Rising gas prices will actually be the driver behind any changes. Long ago I realized that there is a significant lifestyle choice to be made by working from a home office, and, a tangible and measureable benefit, my commute costs $0, burns no fuel. I know other folks that have made commute oriented decisions for financial reasons, one of them bought a smart car to cut commute costs by a huge chunk. The price of oil will and does directly affect the desire to burn it. I made my choice a long time ago by eliminating the commute. I'm not a greenie by any stretch of the imagination, but a firm believer in the market principles, when oil prices itself out of reach, then people will make other choices. Now I'm curious, aside from preaching about dwindling oil supplies, what have you done to actually make a difference ? And, was that choice made because you really believe something has to be done, or, was it made to reduce your cost of living ? I make no bones about it, my choices were financial and lifestyle driven, but, as a side effect, they have more real effect on the 'problem' you describe than anything I've heard come spouting out of the mouths of the greenies that still commute to a job.

[Cat Driver]

Golden Eagle:

Al Gore is a typical example of a hypocrite.

But he is an eco icon..go figure.

[v6g]

take the herlded 'hydrogen hiway' that's been in the news as of late.

Apart from not understanding the math, it's not understanding the chemistry as well. The biggest bi-product of using hydrogen as a fuel is the production of Dihydrogen monoxide (http://www.dhmo.org/facts.html) - or in other words "hydric acid" which plays a key part in climate change.

[xsbank]

Here's a neat article on getting fresh water from salt water...

"Turning the sea into drinking water ruled out as too expensive
David Brown
For an island nation weary of summer hosepipe bans, the prospect of using our greatest natural resource to provide unlimited drinking water seemed an obvious solution.

But as weather forecasters predicted another hot, dry summer, plans to convert the sea into drinking water were abandoned after a two-year trial showed the scheme to be unfeasible.

A pilot desalination scheme at Newhaven harbour, East Sussex, investigated the potential for a full-scale plant capable of producing 9.5 million litres (two million gallons) of drinking water a day. It was watched closely by water companies across the South of England, which have experienced supply shortages in recent summers.

The trial found that producing drinking water through desalination is up to ten times more expensive than from traditional sources. The cost of producing desalinated water during shortages, or at time of peak demand, would cost £450 per million litres, compared with £35 from ground water supplies and £50 from rivers.

It also found that the power required for the two-stage purification process — in which water is first filtered through sand before being forced at high pressure through a semi-permeable membrane — is environmentally unacceptable. The investigation concluded that it would require 10,000 square metres of solar panels — 1½ times the size of a football pitch — to produce one million litres of water a day, enough to supply about 6,000 people. There would also be environmental impact in disposing of the highly concentrated brine left over from purification.

David Shore, operations director at South East Water, which serves Sussex and Kent, said: “Our trial has demonstrated that desalination is not yet the right solution for delivering water at peak times or during extended dry periods such as droughts.

“Desalination remains an expensive option in terms of operating and environmental costs when compared to developing additional resources, or through other ways of managing customer demand. Many technological advances have been made in desalination and so it will remain an option to consider as part of long-term water resources plans.”

Desalination is used widely in other parts of the world, but mainly in countries with relatively low energy costs or those with no alternative supplies from rivers or ground water.

Robin Wiseman, editor of Desalination & Water Reuse, said that scientists in such locations were making significant advances in technology, which could make plants viable in the future. “I am sure that that by 2020 the technology will have advanced so that there will be some plants on the south coast of England,” he said.

A report by the Water Services Regulation Authority (Ofwat), which approved the South East Water trial, said: “Desalination is becoming more efficient but still uses substantial amounts of energy . . . [and] creates a waste stream of highly concentrated salts. Because of this, in most cases desalination is not cost-effec-tive as there are lower cost alternative sources of water available.”

Thames Water has appealed to ministers for permission to build a desalination plant after plans were blocked by Ken Liv-ingstone, the Mayor of London, on environmental grounds. The plant, at Beckton, would produce 140 million litres a day, enough for about 900,000 people, from the “brackish” waters of the Thames estuary, which have about a third of the salt content of the sea.

Low salt

— The the first recorded desalination was in the 17th century, when Japanese sailors used earthenware pots to boil seawater

— In 1791 Thomas Jefferson was asked to investigate claims that a new “desalting process” (by chemical addition /distillation) could provide fresh water to the infant US Navy

— Malta claims credit for the world’s first “commercial” desalination plant, which opened at Sliema in 1881

— In 1907 the Ottoman Turks installed Saudi Arabia’s first desalination plant in Jedda

Sources: Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute; National Environmental Services Center, West Virginia University; Halcrow Water Services

[North Shore]

If we are indeed running out of oil, no big deal. Society and the economy will react. The free markets will find other alternatives, when they become cost effective. That will happen sooner rather than later if indeed the supply is truely short. If it isn't, then the switch will wait, until the economics make it viable. In either case, the switch will happen when the math shows, it's cheaper to change, and not before.

Big huge deal, actually.... First, there's no guarantee that any of the alternatives that we have on the horizon are scalable to the quantities (biofuels) that we as a society need, technically feasable (fusion?) or will come onstream fast enough to keep up with the oil depletion rate. remember that the automobile was invented ~ 1900, yet it took until the 50's until >50% of households had one. How long for fuel-cell cars? Also, the most valuable use of oil isn't driving my ass down to 7-11 to get ice-cream..it's probably the agricultural sector, in terms of fertilisers and mechanisation of farming. Start running out of oil, and a lot of people are going to get a lot thinner..

As for the rest of your comment, well, I dunno...Single car family <16000km/yr @ ~6L/100km, ride my bike or carpool to work most days, drag the kid around in a bike trailer, thermostat down at 15c during the day. Flying isn't the most responsible use of oil, but otoh, I only did ~180 hours last year, and that was at the Provincial Government's behest.. Could/should I do more - yes, probably..will I? As the finances permit, yes. Why? well, economics does play a part, but also innate conservatism, and the 'it's the right thing to do' factor. For example, my house, built in 1962, isn't insulated. the latest quote is ~$2500 to do so. will it save me that much in heating costs over, say 10 years - probably not. But, it irritates me that some of my hard-earned cash is disappearing to unnecessarily heat my garden.

[goldeneagle]

take the herlded 'hydrogen hiway' that's been in the news as of late.

Apart from not understanding the math, it's not understanding the chemistry as well. The biggest bi-product of using hydrogen as a fuel is the production of Dihydrogen monoxide (http://www.dhmo.org/facts.html) - or in other words "hydric acid" which plays a key part in climate change.

Ahh yes, the vaunted 'climate change', formerly known as 'global warming' inevitably comes into this type of discussion. So, now, not only are we dealing with 'dont understand the arithmetic', and dealing with 'dont understand the chemistry', we have to mix in 'dont understand the measurements' as well. For decades we have listened to the drivel about the process of change, and how it can only have come about due to the abundant burning of fossil fuels, the data was (apparently) convincing. But, like all measured data, that used for pushing forward the infamous 'hockey stick' graphs of global warming, was subject to errors in the measurement process. All of the folks taking the national weather service data as the gospel truth spent years, and literally billions of dollars of research grants trying to explain the data, and summarily as a group concluded that the only cause was our proliferation of CO2 into the atmosphere thru the burning of fossil fuel. Nobody really paid much attention to the math involved in producing the data, how it was translated from the raw temperature measurements, to the 'adjusted for xxx factors' data used as the scientific basis for all the fear mongering.

Well, eventually it was inevitable, somebody would look carefully at the conversion math used in that process, and, to much surprise, they found basic errors in the statistical methods used for the adjustments. Less than a year ago, this was kindly pointed out to the national weather service in the us. With no fanfare whatsoever, the published historical data on the subject was quietly changed. The raw data now shows what our grandparents distinctly remember, the depression years were 'hot and dusty', somewhat warmer than recent history. Prior to the the correction of statistical errors, the data did show 7 of the 10 hottest years on record happened within that last 15 years. Now, only one of the hottest 10 in the recorded history records happened recently, and, the majority of them happened in the 30's. So much for the vaunted 'burning oil is heating the planet' relationship, because, we didnt' start burning it till AFTER the hot and dusty depression years. It should be interesting over the next few years, because there are a lot of up and coming young grad students doing research on the subject today, and, they are going to be publishing papers that show what was wrong with the science of the last 20 years that produced the global warming scare.

The ice on this part of the planet has been melting for 10,000 years, what has changed that should make it stop melting now ? The simple answer is, nothing. I took up astronomy as a hobby a few years back, and from that, discovered something interesting. As a pilot, you should already know that the magnetic pole moves around, thats why we have to repaint the numbers on the runways every now and again. What I didn't know prior to taking up the hobby, is that the real pole moves around somewhat too, in a 26,000 year cycle. When you look up flying along at night today, you look for polaris, the north star, to tell you where north is. Well, in a few thousand years, vega will be the north star. That's going to have a huge effect on what parts of the planet are temperate, what is cold, and what is tropical, because it changes the earth/sun geometry. Never ceases to amaze me, all of the climate change fear mongers seem to ignore this little detail, I've NEVER once heard a greenie talk about it, yet earth/sun geometry is the single LARGEST factor in our climate, and it's not constant. We probably wont hear much about it either, its hard to get research grants to investigate something already well known that doesn't generate terrific fear mongering headlines, and only results in a very very tiny annual change, that will take a few hundred years of accurate measurement to actually produce reliable results. It is apparently irrelavent that the timescales of that change actually co-incide relatively closely to the cycle of ice ages....

'We burn to much oil' is the basic mantra of greenies today, and they certainly do a lot to connect 'the planet is warming' with the burning of oil. The math to correlate the two was flawed, and the national weather service has corrected that data. Its interesting to note, the VAST majority of peer reviewed scientific papers on the subject will no longer withstand peer scrutiny. Acadamia now has no choice but to start channeling the research grant stream in different directions, it will be interesting to see where the cookies finally crumble in this area. On the more practical side, if indeed we are burning to much, it will become scarce, and, from that the price will go up. Joe average will make economic choices to reduce the personal dependance on the stuff, and, that will trickle up in the grand scheme of things, the system will correct itself along the way. If the process is gradual enough, the correction wont be dramatic. If the depletion happens as fast as the fear mongers would have you believe, then that correction wont be gradual, and, it will have a huge impact on many individual, possibly a financial catastrophe for many of them.

No matter how you twist it though, in the end, the economics will be the driver that cause folks to try solve the problem(s). Switching to different sources of energy will not be driven by a percieved scarcity of oil, it will be driven by oil pricing itself out of reach. The modern solution to oil supply issues today is 'go out, drill more wells', and it's a solution that seems to work. As long as that works, not much will change. When drilling more wells stops working, prices will go up in a real way, not the inflation/currency adjustments we see today. If you dont think aviation can adjust fast enough, well, then you haven't paid attention to history either. It's only taken 2 generations to make the switch completely from piston to turbine power. Rest assured, the moment a power source cheaper than jet fuel becomes available, somebody will build an airplane that uses it. Within 2 generations, the entire fleet will be converted, faster if a scarcity of oil drives jet fuel prices up at an accelerated pace.

One question I always ask folks that try preach about the oil situation these days. How much did you spend on prepping for the disaster Y2K that was looming 10 years ago? You would be amazed how sheepish a lot of them get suddenly when pressed on this question. That's what happens when folks realize they bought into a lot of fear mongering over a problem they truely didn't understand, and, inevitably it was shown, the fear mongers didn't understand it either.

[Holy Magenta]

I haven't heard too many studies say that Bio-diesel has worse emissions, in fact quite the opposite. I have heard a lot in the media lately about the back lash against bio-diesel because of the farming effect etc etc.

From what I understand, and I could be wrong, the whole bio-diesel thing started as a recycling plan. Turning waste oils into fuel instead of just throwing it out or trying to dispose of it. Government subsidized soy farming for bio-diesel is a sham considering how much fuel goes into farming in the first place. Bio-diesel will never be a replacement, its just an alternative supply to alleviate the demand for oil. It could be an effective supply for a farmer's needs or something to that effect, and maybe sell it on some small markets. It definitely isn't going to be an environmental solution if they use fertilizers and huge tractors to grow it. And without a doubt, it isn't going to be the savior answer for our society's gross energy wants.