Gas Prices -- Help at last?

"George Patterson" wrote

No, there are several concentrations. Quite a few are located near Newark,
for
example.

No argument on that. There is somewhat less chance that production could be
halted due to some natural disaster in Newark. They may have a Nor'East'r
from time to time, but not too many level 4 or 5 hurricanes. g

A major new refinery at some other location would still be a benefit.
--
Jim in NC

"George Patterson" wrote in message
news:ah_3f.1536$Lb1.318@trndny03...
Matt Barrow wrote:

How many of the 149?

I haven't found anything conclusive on the web. Four companies have
refineries in the State, but each may have several. That's just NJ, of
course; PA, UT, ND, VA, and NY also have refineries. I'm sure there are
many other states that host these facilities.

Yes, Colorado has a few as well, that gives local capacity, and having such
strategic resources spread out is a good thing.


--
Matt

---------------------
Matthew W. Barrow
Site-Fill Homes, LLC.
Montrose, CO

"Newps" wrote in message
...


wrote:

Newps wrote:



Well, the descendants of the original settlers are still living in
Iceland, farming it and living a pretty good life. They haven´t left
at all.

Because they went back. Greenland and Iceland were devoid of humans for
quite a while there.

Ah....I believe Iceland has been continuously inhabited since about 1000 AD.
(?)

On Fri, 14 Oct 2005 01:04:37 -0700, "Matt Barrow"
wrote:


"Roger" wrote in message
.. .
On Wed, 12 Oct 2005 17:48:13 -0700, "Matt Barrow"
wrote:

Sorry, but we are running out of electrical generating capacity and
gasoline refining capacity. You don't have to believe it now, but you
will in the not too distant future.

We won't run out and are not RUNNING out; the capacity can't keep up with
demand, and expansion is just about as heavily regulated as the initial
construction.

Ahhh... You just described exactly what he said. We are running out
of generating capacity and refining capacity. He did not say we are
running out of gas or crude.

"Running out" to me infers having ZERO capacity; "running short" means not
being able to keep up with demand. That, to me, is a significant difference.
My take on the other Matt is that he means we're losing _all our capacity_.


Ah, the vagarities(sp?) of the English language.
So, I shall rephrase it to we are fast running out of the refining
ability to meet the demand. Like being I/O bound in a computer the
energy system is currently approaching being refinery bound

However, increasing our refining capacity is only going to increase
out dependence on foreign crude.
Correct -- producing enough crude or other supplies is another issue.

Nothing magical is going to happen
to reduce the average American's use of gas unless forced to do so.

Yes, there will; PRICES.No maginc involved, just reality. Prices are the
balance point between supply and demand. There's no thuggery of force
involved. If the utility you get from $4 or $5 a gallon is significant to
you, you use it; if not, you don't. There's always options.

We are basically saying the same thing. Nothing is going to reduce
the price except supply and demand. As the average American is not
going to reduce their use of fuel unless *forced* to do so, and I use
the word advisedly as in forced to reduce the use because they can't
afford to maintain the current use. IE, they do not have enough
discretionary income to use except for the most necessary of trips.
I'm not sure starving would convince them to use mass transit, but
then again, we don't have much in the way of mass transit except in
some of the largest cities and on each coast.

In running my business, fuel for my airplane is worth it, even at $4.00 or
more a gallon. In my case, fuel costs are a tiny portion of running the
business. OTOH, for my private use in my car or PU truck, $2.70 a gallon
gas means I don't make frivolous trips to the store to buy a handful of
goods.

I spend $4.00 a gallon for avgas to play and visit a widely dispersed
family, albeit it I don't play near as much as I used to and I fly a
plane that requires a good many hours a year in which to stay
proficient. I believe the average pilot flies about 30 some hours a
year and it takes that many to stay proficient. So if not flying much
I spend most of my time practicing maneuvers, which I happen to enjoy.


So
I don't see alternative energy sources happening, or becoming viably
economical until gas prices are high enough to make them so. So in 20
years we will just be using more gas unless the price gets high enough
to force a change.

Well, I wouldn't use the word "force", but I know what you mean.

I'd still use it, but qualify it by adding forced by the cost of fuel.



I do agree that *rebuilding*, or replacing current refineries with
more efficient ones would be a good way to go, but a buddy of mine who
retired from a refinery told me they basically rebuild them every ten
years through incremental maintenance.

Yes, there is much to encourage keeping them as technically "state of the
art" as feasible. As for "rebuilding them every ten years", that sounds
rather hyperbolic.

However, there is just so much we can get out of a gallon of crude and
even the most efficient refineries are not going to change that a lot.
Basically the efficiency is how much of each gallon of crude do they
use to run the refinery versus how much product they get out of that
gallon?

Crude, depending on quality contains everything from asphalt on the
high boiler end to highly volatile chemicals on the other with a lot
of stuff in between. The contents are separated out using plain old
distillation. They can change the ratio of high boilers to low
boilers by a process called cracking (generally using platinum as a
catalyst) where they break apart the long molecules of the high
boilers, add hydrogen and create smaller molecule lower boilers. So
in the winter they make more fuel oil which requires less cracking
than making gas for cars. But when they make fuel oil there is less
crude available from which to make gas for cars.

There is sweet and sour crude. Sour contains a high sulphur content
while sweet has a low content and is easier to handle with less
pollutants. "As I understand" the crude from Alaska is relatively
sour so we sell much of that and then purchase a higher quality sweet
crude.

My understanding is *Generally* sour crude like soft coal comes from
shallower depths than sweet.


The issue I'm addressing is that with shale, tar sands and other options

These are all expensive and relatively low returns for the energy
required to get the crude out, although the amount of crude in these
deposits is huge. The same is true with coal. We have very large
deposits of coal that are readily available, but they come with a high
pollution price. We need to develop better scrubbers and ways of
reclaiming the pollutants.

hopefully coming along, we'd not be able to produce what we need. Running
refineries at 95+% of capacity is an invitation to a boondoggle, both
economically and strategically.

Refineries need to run at the 95% plus level to be at their most
efficient. Less than that and the efficiency goes down in a hurry.


About two years ago, the pipeline that supplies Phoenix with gasoline was
broken for about five days. My in-laws described it as "reminiscent of the
1970's waiting in line for gas".

Katrina was another example, but as Mike Rappoport said, it was a 50 year
incidence. And he's right. It should, though, give a clue as to our
vulnerabilities. What if Rita has gone a bit further south and took out
Houston/Galveston? Most of our remaining refineries are in very tenuous
locations.

Hurricane intensities are cyclical, and I don't buy the BS that they have
anything to do with "Global Warming", but more than half (?) of our refining
capacity is in "hurricane alley". It hasn't been a disaster yet, but why
tempt "fate"?

That I do. Science has shown there is a cyclic warming and cooling,
but they have also shown this cycle is accelerating and it'd directly
related to the amount of extra CO2 in the air.
The temperature of the oceans has risen, the levels have risen, and
the glaciers are retreating. Hurricanes are fueled by warm water and
it takes very little increase to make them much stronger.

*Most* scientists now agree that global warming is real. What no one
knows for sure is how much is due to mankind and how much is natural.
What they can do is trace , or compare the temperature rise to the
amount of CO2 in the air and they do correlate fairly well right back
to the beginning of the industrial revolution. That and the huge
amount of slash and burn going on in South America.

Another thing upon which they agree; is with any increase of global
temperature the weather will become more varied and more violent.
We'll have to wait a few more years to see just what is happening.
Once thing is for certain, mother nature will fight any change. The
jet streams and winds are her effort to even out the earth's
temperatures.

One thing they seem to agree on is, fresh water melt could cause the
ocean circulating currents (Gulf Stream as an example) to stop in less
than a decade once the process were started and many hundreds if not
thousands of years to restart.

IF and that is a big IF the Antarctic glaciers (the ones on land not
the ones already floating) were to melt or to slip into the sea all of
out coastal cities would cease to exist, but at least that would not
happen overnight, or at least they don't think so. Of course we don't
know what the fresh water from the floating ones would do. OTOH they
do agree that the state of Florida and the City of New Orleans would
no longer be problem sites and the Gulf of Mexico would be a whole lot
bigger.

Roger Halstead (K8RI & ARRL life member)
(N833R, S# CD-2 Worlds oldest Debonair)
www.rogerhalstead.com

On Fri, 14 Oct 2005 12:51:16 -0500, "Montblack"
wrote:

("Bob Noel" wrote)
Man couldn't affect the temp of the
globe one way or the other if he set out to do it.

of course global temps can be affected. Pop off a few nukes
and wait.


I'd rather wait for the next volcano to erupt. Less political ...fallout.

Glad you added the "political" to that. One in the Snake River Valley
deposited ash something like 12 to 15 feet deep clear over in kansas.
Now that is a *lot* of fallout:-))

Roger Halstead (K8RI & ARRL life member)
(N833R, S# CD-2 Worlds oldest Debonair)
www.rogerhalstead.com


Montblack

Sylvain wrote:
wrote:
Well, the descendants of the original settlers are still living in
Iceland, farming it and living a pretty good life. They haven=B4t left
at all.

they had a few close calls though.... (just finished reading "Collapse"
by Jared Diamond -- you might want to have a look) --

Jared Diamond is talking total nonsense, he knows nothing at all about
Iceland.

Newps wrote:
wrote:

Newps wrote:

wrote:


That the world is warming is not in question, the numbers are obvious.
What is causing it to warm is still in debate (especially by the Bush
White House), but a great number of scientists feel that man and the
greenhouse gasses he produces is likely the root cause.

Which shows the arrogance of man. I just finsihed reading a book about
the Viking explorers. They settled Iceland and Greenland around the
years 750-1050 AD. The "scientists" say that they were able to stay
there at all is because about the time they got there corresponded to a
global warming cycle that made the glaciers recede, the winters easier
and the summers warmer and longer. About the time they left corresponds
to the "Little Ice Age".


Well, the descendants of the original settlers are still living in
Iceland, farming it and living a pretty good life. They haven=B4t left
at all.

Because they went back. Greenland and Iceland were devoid of humans for
quite a while there.

No, they did not. In Greenland the Inuit returned around AD 1000 and
the Norse settlement lasted until ca 1500 (or longer) and Iceland has
been continously populated since the settlement.

Matt Barrow wrote:
"Newps" wrote in message
...


wrote:

Newps wrote:



Well, the descendants of the original settlers are still living in
Iceland, farming it and living a pretty good life. They haven=B4t left
at all.

Because they went back. Greenland and Iceland were devoid of humans for
quite a while there.

Ah....I believe Iceland has been continuously inhabited since about 1000 =
AD.

Iceland has been continously inhabited since ca 700, Greenland much
longer (when the Vikings arrived the Inuit were only in the extreme
north of the country)

Matt Barrow wrote:
wrote in message
ups.com...

Newps wrote:
wrote:


That the world is warming is not in question, the numbers are obvious.
What is causing it to warm is still in debate (especially by the Bush
White House), but a great number of scientists feel that man and the
greenhouse gasses he produces is likely the root cause.

Which shows the arrogance of man. I just finsihed reading a book about
the Viking explorers. They settled Iceland and Greenland around the
years 750-1050 AD. The "scientists" say that they were able to stay
there at all is because about the time they got there corresponded to a
global warming cycle that made the glaciers recede, the winters easier
and the summers warmer and longer. About the time they left corresponds
to the "Little Ice Age".

Well, the descendants of the original settlers are still living in
Iceland, farming it and living a pretty good life. They haven=B4t left
at all.

Iceland is not Greenland. Iceland is warmed by ocean currents and has been
inhabited for centuries, unlike Greenland which is pretty much
un-inhabitable ANYMORE except on very limited scale (non-self-supporting).

I know that, but the original poster does not seem to have known that
and it seems quite common misconception that both countries were
uninhabited for long periods.
Greenland has actually quite large areas that are quite inhabitable but
the island is so large that those areas are only a very small part of
the total size of the country. I belive that the "green" areas in
Greenland may well be larger than the "green" areas of Iceland.

In article ,
"Matt Barrow" wrote:

Man couldn't affect the temp of the
globe one way or the other if he set out to do it.

of course global temps can be affected. Pop off a few nukes
and wait.

Like the above ground nuke testing done in the 50's and still done
occasionally today?

(my response is more general in nature and not specific to Matt Barrow)

sigh

ok, I shouldn't said "a few nukes." I should have said: pop off a few
thousand nukes with the intent to put billions on tons of dust into
the air. Anyone want to claim that this wouldn't affect global temps?

--
Bob Noel
no one likes an educated mule