Former CIA man Robert Baer, author of "Sleeping With the Devil," ponders the world after the Saudis. Don't look so surprised. You thought such a dysfunctional clan would last forever on the throne? This isn't Britain. Baer warns that "the social and economic fallout of its demise could be calamitous."
Saudi Arabia today is a mess, and it is our mess. We made it the private storage tank for our oil reserves. We reaped the benefits of a steady petroleum supply at a discounted price, and we grabbed at every available Saudi petrodollar. We taught the Saudis exactly what was expected of them. We cannot walk away morally from the consequences of this behavior—and we really can't walk away economically. So we crow about democracy and talk about someday weaning ourselves from our dependence on foreign oil, despite the fact that as long as America has been dependent on foreign oil there has never been an honest, sustained effort at the senior governmental level to reduce long-term U.S. petroleum consumption.But what other options have we got? According to Baer, damned few....
Signs of impending disaster are everywhere, but the House of Saud has chosen to pray that the moment of reckoning will not come soon—and the United States has chosen to look away. So nothing changes: the royal family continues to exhaust the Saudi treasury, buying more and more arms and funneling more and more "charity" money to the jihadists, all in a desperate and self-destructive effort to protect itself.
I think Baer is too hard on us, and too little hard on the Saudis. The current corrupt system benefits the Royal family more than anyone else, absent a coup and some Saddam like strongman in the mid-nineties there was little we could do about this. What, make the world not buy their oil? Magically shift oil from Saudi to say, Norway? Yes the Saudis bought lots of influence, but it's magical thinking to believe that with anti-corruption jawboning the essential structure of the regime or "good Royal" Abdullah would suddenly rule the country properly.
I do think Baer paints a picture of an inevitable Islamic Revolution, but it is not our fault. Saudi never changed from a tribal society, they just remained a tribal society with lots of money.
So if a massive disruption of oil supplies is inevitable, and Saudi is our enemy by supporting Jihad and bin Laden (which is true likely both cases), then the only option is to choose the time and place for the disruption, and act to shape events rather than be shaped by them.
Abdullah sounds like no panacea. The ultimate problem is that Saudi Arabia is like Yemen with money, the society has not changed from tribal primitivism. He'll be less corrupt but that's it.
A lot of Baer's initial points were addressed here in Oil Infrastructure: The Next Terror Target? and also Dan's follow-on piece. Bottom line: there are reasons this hasn't happened yet.
Re: stability... note the date of the article: 2003. Saudi Arabia is an unstable system. How unstable? How long will it survive? Even unstable systems can last for a surprisingly long time - each safety valve is temporary only, but buys time.
Or, things could collapse quickly. Trent's Long Goodbye article (also from 2003) suggests that some preparations are being made for that day, but it's hard to tell. And the longer Iraq draws out, the longer the prep period will be.
I assume the Saudis know this, which may explain their support for Iraq's Islamofascist alliance with its interest in blowing up oil pipelines.
The effect on the US economy of a Saudi shutoff is less devastating this year than last and will be less devastating still next year. The reason for this is that the cost for the next energy system, in the form of hydrogen fuel cells and the multiple feedstocks that will provide that hydrogen (including, but not limited to natural gas and oil) is becoming cheaper and more practical by the year. 2010 is the best guess at which point the two systems (fuel cell and petroleum burning internal combustion engines) will hit parity at which time, we'll be weaning ourselves off the oil age and into the hydrogen age.
A saudi collapse would still hurt, but it would be less painful every year thereafter because a large number of new sources of energy would be coming on line that are now wasted because the energy you get out of them doesn't justify a separate infrastructure of different engines to burn each of these sources. With fuel cells, they all feed into the same energy carrier, the fuel cell which powers electric motors.
The key points are not to panic, not to cause a panic, and to put off the day of Saudi reckoning until new technology shrinks Saudi importance to the point where we can survive the shock without major disruption of our way of life. I'd give us good odds of doing so.
- The US is more dependent on foreign oil than ever.
- North America natural gas production has peaked. There is no production margin to use to replace oil; the high price of gas has caused some gas consumers to replace it with oil!
- PEM fuel cells currently cost about $5000/kW; a 100 kW fuel cell suitable for a vehicle costs about half a million dollars. It took 20 years to get a 1 order of magnitude reduction in the cost of PV cells; are you seriously claiming that we can get a 2-order-of-magnitude cut in the cost of PEM FC's effectively overnight?
- Where's all this hydrogen infrastructure going to come from, since we will need it as soon as the crisis hits?
We could do much better with batteries; full replacement of the petroleum used in surface transportation would require only about 180 GW (perhaps less, depending on the efficiencies available from electric systems; check the vehicle-mileage data and work from there).Li-ion cells to drive a car ~300 miles cost about $43000 today; this is less than 1/10 of what the equivalent PEM fuel cell costs. Zinc-air fuel cells (primary batteries) are even cheaper. These are clearly the least-resistance path to eliminating the need for petroleum as transport fuel. Yet the Bush administration has been consistently pushing hydrogen (Bush opened a hydrogen fuelling station in May) and ethanol (useless except as a farm program to support corn-growing states).
Saudi crude production is roughly equal to US motor-gasoline consumption. If Saudi Arabia went off-line, world sweet-light crude prices would go through the roof until enough economies (like Nicaragua) had collapsed to bring demand back in line with supply. Nothing the US could do in the next 2 years, or even 5, could come remotely close to filling the demand gap without economic shocks and huge lifestyle changes. Even if we took every Escalade, Hummer and Navigator at gunpoint, dropped them into crushers and replaced them with the likes of Saturns, Priuses and diesel Jettas, we could not make that big of a difference.
Plug-in hybrids could go most of the distance, but the manufacturing capability for the required volume does not exist. I found that I've been talking about plug-in hybrids since 1992 (the CARB ZEV mandate was in 1990, and I said that such vehicles would either be impractical or too expensive and partial grid power was the way to go; I had that one pegged). Unfortunately, neither our fuel-economy nor air-quality policies have done squat to give appropriate credit, and thus incentives, to PIH's and their producers and buyers. Had we used the past 15 years we could be as ready for a Saudi collapse as you imply we are; unfortunately, we have squandered them.
More detail (and still more to come) at The Ergosphere.
EP has turned rational skeptic. I applaud.
In addition it is possible that the methanol cell will leap frog the hydrogen cell. Electronic applications don't you know.
It is too early to pick a winner.
EP,
The problem with alternative transportation efforts (as you have pointed out) is that instead of transitional they were concieved as maximalist. The enviro lobby wanted it and they wanted it NOW. Thus holding up the process of real change for several decades.
Being in a hurry doesn't always speed things up.
BTW given that most trips are 3 - 5 mi, fast charging super capacitors might be just the ticket (as opposed to batteries). As load levelers they improve battery performance. So they may be in the mix no matter what technology is used.
They are still coming down the cost curve rapidly. In addition energy density is still rising though not as fast as costs are declining.
The quickest way to cut fuel consumption in America is to modem to work.
Alternative energy transportation may not be the best place to invest our economic energy efficiency dollars. It might best be put into extending broadband.
Which is why government mandates and development programs are the wrong way to go. The focus is too narrow.
What do you mean, TURNED rational skeptic? Been one since before the Web was invented.
I recently recieved a link from a reader pointing me to an announcement of supercapacitors costing a mere $400 per kWh of capacity; a Prius-worth of supercapacitors would cost about $500. Unfortunately the news item specified nothing about bulk, weight, leakage or internal resistance; if you don't tell a double-E these things about your great new device you're going to get blown off, and rightfully so.
BTW changing from the current hybrid design to plug in hybrids is a relatively minor design change. You add a charger and change the running software. The charger could be dual purpose - it could deliver as well as accept electricity.
Every automobile becomes a 20KW self propelled generator.
The integrated starter/generator (ISG) is probably the next big step along the way. Some hybrid capability gets built in.
Rebuilding the transport energy system around methanol gets around some of the infrastructure issues by re-using things like pipelines and tankers, but there's a huge problem with the methanol itself: it would all have to be created from other raw materials, and the production capability just isn't there. Unless we are going to make it all from coal, by the time we've built the chemical plants the feedstock may not be there.
Most thinking about public transport energy systems is constrained by the "gas-pump" box: people have a mental image of pumping some kind of physical fluid into the car to make it go. The fluid can be gasoline, biodiesel, LPG, CNG or hydrogen and people will understand what you're talking about.
They don't understand electricity as transport energy; if you bring it up, some mutter about extension cords. Yet the plug-in hybrid could slash gasoline consumption by half, replacing it with electricity (which the grid has ample excess capacity to deliver during off-peak periods [1]). We could supply that energy straight to vehicles via wires; the infrastructure for that is already built except for the "last ten feet" problem. We could also set up an infrastructure for zinc fuel cells (delivering metallic zinc to the vehicle and removing zinc hydroxide "ash"), but that would be even more unfamiliar and thus incomprehensible.
We've got things that will work, but between the "gas pump box" and the active disinformation campaigns being waged by the coal, oil and gas lobbies (pushing for hydrogen) and the farm lobby (pushing for ethanol), it's nearly impossible for the best solutions to get a mention in big public debates.
[1] Nameplate generation capacity of the US grid is over 950 GW, average electric consumption is ~440 GW, average transport energy consumption based on a somewhat optimistic calculation of drivetrain efficiency is about 180 GW.
EP,
A 1.2F 500V (360V operating) supercapacitor is available that costs about $1.6K in prototype quantities and weighs 38KG. In quantities of 1,000 I estimate the cost to be $250 ea.
It is feasible to use them as a peak power device capable of taking a 3,700 lb auto from about 0 to 40 mph or about 3 miles of travel at 25 mph. Takes 4 super caps to do the job. One super cap could get you up to 20 mph. The neat thing about the super cap is that it can take or dump charge efficiently at a 250 amp rate. Fully charging four such caps at that rate would take less than 10 seconds - if the charger and electrical infrastructure could handle it.
I have run the numbers. In fact I have a spread sheet at the ready. Very handy when you have to answer questions on the fly.
BTW I'm looking for investors for such a product.
I have an idea on how to start a car company for a few million dollars. I even have a business plan. Contact me.
EP,
Methanol infrastructure (production capacity) would get built out as demand for methanol fuel cells for electronic use rose. I'm an incremental type guy.
There is a reason for the "gas pump box". Piping fluids is cheap. Hauling zinc in one direction and zinc ash in another is expensive. In addition the zinc needs to be precisely formed.
There is also a reason why oil replaced coal. Even though finely pulverized coal could be a transportation fuel.
Did I mention that coal slurry pipelines never caught on?
Think about needing a fork lift to refuel your auto vs a small metered pump. Think about having to bolt and unbolt stuff vs opening the gas tank and turning on the pump.
I wouldn't trust anyone who'd omit a salient fact like that, and certainly wouldn't invest money with them.
EP,
Since incementalism can't work please explain how all the gas stations that we didn't have in 1900 suddenly showed up in 1930?
Of course if incementalism can't work then we have to wait until we are absolutely sure we are building out the right technology before we do anything. I say we wait 40 or 50 years to be sure we don't waste a lot of $$$.
Or we can give gas distributors a big subsidy to stock a fuel hardly any one will buy. And mandate a system that owners will not be very happy with due to cost, power, convenience, or reliability issues.
What I have seen is that the market delivers with no mandates about 1 to 2 years after a government mandate can. The thing is as technology changes the market adapts. The government is not good at adapting. You have all those hydrogen folks not wanting to get off the government gravy train and all the methanol folks wanting to get on it. And then come the lawyers. New laws must be passed. Old laws repealed. It is cumbersome. Look at the Calif. ZEV boondoggle.
As I pointed out, the enviros wanted a ZEV mandate so bad that they held up development of hybrids. Why we want to repeat that stupidity? I suppose repeating stupidity is our lot in life, other wise change might come too fast.
I like doing things the organic way: let them evolve. Or look at how nerves and blood vessels grow in an embryo.
The five year plan bit went out with the Soviets - didn't it?
I think your point about the coal slurry pipelines exactly makes my point. Interests entrenched by law are hard to dislodge.
Why aren't rail rights of way universal? Well the slurry folks wouldn't like it any better. They couldn't keep out their competitors.
And why aren't coal folks clamoring for rights of way? After all they have some clout. It is not like the rail folks are the only game in town. There is oil and natural gas.
My bet is that de-watering is expensive and more than makes up for the $$$ saved in transport. If it was a money maker laws would get passed after a PR campaign.
=============In any case. Who is going to stock 5 or 50 different sizes of zinc plates and the storage for zinc oxide. And truck all that stuff around. What happens if the plates get bent in transport?
=============Whatever will be done in a mass way in the next 20 years is going to be done with a liquid fuel.
Two reasons: energy density, ease of transport.
Zinc may pass the energy density test. It fails the ease of transport test. You have to pass both.
I do not understand the concern about our "dependence on foreign oil." We depend on foreign oil because it is a good deal -- i.e., it's currently the cheapest way to satisfy our energy needs. If, due to supply disruptions or high demand, the price goes up a lot and it stops being a good deal, we will adjust our behavior by using less oil and more alternatives. Unfettered markets are generally very good at making such adjustments, while centrally planned attempts to anticipate them are generally disasters. The worst thing we could do would be to try and predict the future by shunting public resources, at the expense of economic growth, into this or that currently-favored technology. We can't know which non-oil fuel technology will replace oil. We can't know how long the Saudi regime will last or what will happen to oil supplies if it's overthrown. It may be that the Saudis will muddle along for years, letting us use even more of that cheap oil that is so beneficial to us.
Power/mass: 45 kW / 38 kg = 1.2 kW/kg.
Energy/mass: 0.57 Wh/kg
Power/$: 180 W/$
Energy/$: 0.086 Wh/$
Off-the-shelf 18650 Li-ion cell, 2000 mAh @ 3.6 volts = 7.2 Wh. It cost ~$5.00/ea in quantity of a few hundred. Using nanoparticle cathodes, charge/discharge rates in excess of 12 C (and up to 50 C) are possible.
At 12 C discharge, power = 24 A * 3.6 V = 86.4 W.
Power/mass: 86.4 W / 0.043 kg = 2 kW/kg
Energy/mass: 167 Wh/kg
Power/$: 17.3 W/$
Energy/$: 1.44 Wh/$
Looks like batteries whoop your capacitor in everything except watts per dollar, and if your specs are driven by energy-storage considerations even that could be moot. If you need energy to go 5 miles at 250 Wh/mile, the capacitors would cost $14500 while the batteries would cost $870; it's not even close, batteries win.
If your spreadsheet didn't lay that out for you, you need a new one.The idea of a stranded motorist buying a hundred laptop-sized methanol cartridges and squeezing the contents into his tank is both comical and sufficient to put anyone off the idea of incrementalism. The early motorists who put naptha cleaning fluid into their cars had advantages of both product quantity and packaging.Incrementalism worked when there was no competition in the niche, but it didn't work to get something as interchangeable as unleaded gasoline out to consumers. Who is going to buy a methanol-FC car when there is no methanol station within 50 miles? Who's going to put in a methanol pump when there are twenty methanol-FC cars in the whole state?
This is not unlike the situation with CNG, only worse because natural gas is already piped direct to most of the filling stations and the complete distribution system is already installed and paid for. You can get a CNG pump for your garage; try that with methanol.
Electricity is run to the vast majority of garages already, and within tens of feet of most residential carports.Why wait, and why bother? We already know that wind and solar are going to be the world-beaters (wind is already below 6¢/kWh, and announced solar developments in any of several different technologies will push solar PV below the retail price of electricity in much of the USA). All you need is a vehicle that can "fuel" from an extension cord and you've got a bigger energy network than gasoline provides despite a century of the automobile.You didn't point that out; I did (and back in June, and back to 1992). How often do you take credit for other people's observations?You stock one grade of metal powder or filings. You either regenerate it on-site using electricity, or if you have a chemical processing plant nearby you truck Zn(OH)2 to it and get metal back. Slurries and powders travel well in tankers. Gasoline moves in tankers, and you have no option of creating it with energy delivered by wire.That's a mighty bold thing to say when the plug-in hybrid is also coming into its own, and can work with either internal combustion or primary cells as its long-range energy supply. Would you care to make a 10-year wager?We may soon look back on $2.50/gallon petroleum with wistful nostalgia.
Solar PV power costs about 25¢/kWh and is dropping steadily (there may also be quantum jumps as new technologies come to market). Wind power is as low as 4.5¢/kWh and is also dropping as bigger turbines return more energy per dollar invested. Crude was a good deal at $15/bbl, but is no longer. Even if technical and political risks are ignored, it probably never will be again.
It's time to move away from petroleum. I would already have moved, but there are no vehicles on the market that will let me "fuel" with electricity. I expect this to change well before the 2010 model year, but that doesn't help today.
You don't even need to go AE to benefit; if we had electric vehicles, we could use quite a bit less petroleum. Combined-cycle gas turbines turn fuel into electricity at about 50% efficiency; allowing 7% for transmission losses, 10% each for charger and battery losses and 20% at the motor, the overall efficiency would be 30.1%. Compared to burning fuel in a 17% efficient car you could get 77% more miles per gallon and still have the steam-turbine exhaust for industrial process heat.
Then you'd have all the air-pollution reductions coming along with that for free... can you list the market failures?If you mean that we should stop shunting public resources into defense costs for oil producers and routes and charge them at the pump instead, I could not agree more. I can point to entire industries which have come to depend on that one market distortion, amounting to misinvestment of hundreds of billions of dollars.Our current transport energy system is penny-wise and pound-foolish. It evolved in conditions which are now history. It's time to recognize this fact and move on.
Jonathan: I've extended the above comment and put it here; your comments are invited.