Jerry Watson says

I must be a little too dense to understand how idling some refinery capacity is going to be beneficial. Crude prices are high and taking US refiners out of the loop will change that? It will move the refining elsewhere crude demand and prices will be unchanged.

Ferdinand E. Banks says

There might be an argument in favor of that kind of thinking if the world functioned the way that it functions in the first part of your Econ 101 textbook. But that's not the case any longer to my way of thinking - assuming that it ever was true. We have an optimal electricity producing sector here in Sweden, almost/perhaps, but electric prices have become ruinous for many households because some academic fools argued that stretching wires between Germany and Sweden would cure the Swedish electricity shortage - a shortage which did not exist. Oviously, with the energy craziness proposed by Angela Merkel, those wires should be disconnected...one way or another....or the Swedish electric price will go into orbit.

No Swedish executive would say that if he had to choose between selling electricity produced in Sweden to Germany, or keeping it in Sweden, he wished that he had the guts to shout that it should go to Germany so that he could become a multimillionaire. But that it exactly what has happened. What Tam proposes is a kind of economic nationalism, but frankly where the US and Sweden are concerned, I prefer a limited dose nationalism to internationalism, because the bottom line of the latter is making fools of the voters,

Not long ago somebody said that oil imports were costing the US a billion dollers per day. Actually it's probably more, considering the macroeconomic effects of the high oil prices of the last few years. I saw a picture of Mr Obama standing in front of his economics advisory team, and just the thought of that collection of know-nothings continuing for another four years almost runing this Democrat's breakfast.

Jerry Watson says

You bring up an interesting point of leadership at times being removed from reality. Here in the states, after the price spikes for electricity in summer 98 and 99, I believe it was Abraham that said the US needed 200,000 MW of additional generating capacity. After about 20,000 MW of generation came online in 2001 and 2002 it was obvious generation had already been adequate and a over build was in progress. As another 75,000 MW came online in 03 and 04 many of the firms answering his call faced bankruptcy for building the generation. In the 2000 forward pricing curves spark spreads showed combined cycle generation look like a gold mines. These forward prices never materialized.

What was interpreted as a massive capacity shortage was an excess of greed in the face of regulation changes specifically FERC 888. The Commission's goal was “to remove impediments to competition in the wholesale bulk power marketplace and to bring more efficient, lower cost power to the Nation's electricity consumers.” What happened was savvy traders realized they could bypass and use reliability covenants to make big bucks by the wheeling of power away from and back to those control areas caught short and take money from the “Nation’s electricity consumers” by the bucket full.

To move back to the point, the obvious but incorrect conclusion was that a massive shortage of US electrical generation capacity existed. Assumptions, by those at arms lengths like the energy secretary, were taken as fact and acted upon.

I am still missing how this governmental flaw relates to prohibiting gasoline exports or the patriotic appeal of banning these exports. 600,000 barrels at $26 crack spread means $15 million a day coming into US after taking out the 600,000 barrels of crude so we are netting $5 billion a year from this activity. Is the argument that this 7% being exported is significantly increasing current pump prices? In the current refining slump, shouldn’t the fuller refinery utilization actually have the opposite effect? From Foxx Business May 1, 2012 “"We believe there's still too much refining capacity in the U.S. and western Europe," Valero Chief Executive Bill Klesse said during a conference call with investors. "Some things die hard." So at the same time we are idling refinery capacity from under utilization it would be wise to stop exports and idle more US refineries?

I am not buying it, do the homework and it will become evident that their is not economic or patriotic justification to ban Gasoline exports.

Jack Ellis says

Mr. Hunt should find himself a copy of Valero Energy's 2011 Annual Report (I am one of their shareholders and it has been a horrible investment), which provides unusually detailed operating data on the company's refineries by region (see page 30). He'd find that for the West Coast which includes two refineries in California, the average operating profit per barrel was $1.06, which works out to something like 2.5 cents per gallon of crude or less than one percent of the prevailing retail price. It's only because delivery constraints are causing a glut of crude at the Cushing delivery point that operating profits in Valero's Mid Continent region reached the princely level of 23 cents per barrel of crude, or perhaps as much as 8 percent of the retail price of gasoline in that area. In other words, the profits earned by refiners are so meager they hardly make a difference in the retail price of gasoline.

As others have already pointed out, banning gasoline exports will cause more refinery capacity to be shut down as owners determine it isn't in their economic interest to produce refined product at an operating loss. As more capacity is shut down, the remaining refiners will regain some of the pricing power they have lost due to the destruction of domestic demand that has resulted from a weak economy and high prices, which will send prices higher. Assuming, of course, that shuttered refineries are scrapped rather than being sold to industrial consumers of refined product (see the recent acquisition of an oil refinery by Delta Air Lines).

Len Gould says

Given that refinery profits are very likely not anything to do with the high prices, and a gasoline export limit would only provide a very short-term reduction, if any, the whole idea is pointless. And i'd like also to see an analysis of the refined product trade between US and Europe, where I understand Europe imports a lot of excess diesel from US refineries and returns gasoline since Europeans heavily prefer diesel autos and this solution is cheaper than forcing refineries to over-modify output to match.

US citizens need to start thinking a WEE BIT larger than only within their own borders. SOON.

Len Gould says

Ferdinand E. Banks says

In my argument above I mean well but I could be wrong where gasoline is concerned. I know less than my grandchildren about gasoline, because I do not drive, and when I did a few times in the army it was a catastrophe. What I am against is internationalism - against citizens of countries like Sweden and the US (and Canada) suffering because their governments want to participate in stupid wars on the other side of the world, or pass out money to stone age countries so that members of their governments can spend more time in Paris and Rome than I do. As an example, the money being wasted by Sweden in their precious international efforts should go to hospitals and education and research in this country - where by research I do NOT mean economic research. The same holds for the US.

I suppose I should also mention that I never think about Canada, which I consider a rich country and in many or most respects imore civilized than my own country, which still is the US. And if I were a Canadian citizen, and appointed dictator of that excellent country, I would definitely be careful where the export of natural resources is concerned. Before the end of THIS century, those resouces are going to be very very valuable.

Len Gould says

Michael Keller says

If quickly reducing the price of gasoline is the objective, then the following could be implemented immediately: (1) Get rid of mandates for ethanol fuel blends. Instant 10% increase in fuel mileage. As an added bonus, the price of corn (and lots of products that use corn) drops since we are no longer using our food supply to fuel our vehicles. (2) Get rid of boutique fuel blends that place undue constraints on refinery gasoline production, with little, if any, affect on air pollution. The supply of gasoline would increase and that leads to reductions in the price at the pump.

Longer range, increase our own supplies by stopping bureaucrats from handcuffing our own domestic production.

Lest one go into hysterics over air pollution, rely instead on the ever more efficient vehicles to improve air quality, instead of bureaucratic regulations chasing ever more elusive and expensive fractional percentage improvements.

Muxomor Squire says

Muxomor Squire says

Ron Wagner says

bill payne says

Maybe,

New Mexico tech gas geologists Broadhead and Price show that natural gas production is declining in New Mexico with half the gas produced from wells less than five years old.

http://geoinfo.nmt.edu/publications/periodicals/earthmatters/12/EM12n1.pdf

bill payne says

Google 'ryan crocker j orlin grabbe;

Then 'aboulghassem zirakzadeh'

Ferdinand E. Banks says

Fred Linn says

Use natural gas.

We can even build cars that can use both.

Don Hirschberg says

The sun makes the plants to grow and the wind to blow.

Fossil fuels whether of plant or animal remains represent stored solar energy. Stored from long (hundreds of millions of years ago) before man first walked the earth. It really makes little difference whether we have a bonanza of shale gas or not. As it is not renewable and therefore will deplete.

Depletion rate is a function of population.

Fred Linn says

Methane is both a fossil fuel AND a biofuel.

We can make methane low tech, inexpensively and easily from any type of biomass at all, including sewage and landfills. It is being done now---and we have been able to do it for over 160 years in recent recorded history. And probably about 2,000 years, according to archaeological evidence.

The end products of methane production using anaerobic digestion are clean water and compost(fertilizer). A company here in Vancouver, Washington, has begun operations producing commercial fertilizer using this means.

They are using city sewage as the raw feedstock.

Don Hirschberg says

Suppose on average we eat food with a calorific value of 2000 Kcal/day. That's 8000 BTUs. Even if you could use 25% of those food BTUs to efficiently generate electricity you would get 0.25 Kwh per person per day, or about 10 continuous watts. On an annual basis our two person household usage is about 2000 continuous watts. (It is an all-electric house with heat pump, and we are energy frugal.)

Cattle are very good at making methane from grass but there are certain logistical problems.

Don Hirschberg says

In my previous post I tried to show that there is not enough energy in sewage to make a dent in usage because the input of human sewage does not contain enough energy potential to make a big difference no matter how it is manipulated.

Aerobic treatment is the fourth step in treating sewage. After dragging myself though 4 treatment steps and 10 chemical equations I learned that an ideal(?) treatment plant produces lots of methane, CO2, water and acetic acid. Acetic acid is highly soluble in water and is called vinegar, no problem.

Further, while the people of Vancouver send their toilet effluent to a treatment plant many people of India do not. China, India and South Asia, Africa is where the people are. Where would we get the water to flush all their toilets?

Fred Linn says

The biomethane that is used is produced by anaerobic digestion of sewage waste from several livestock farms in the area. The biogas is scrubbed, and fed into a dedicated biomethane line connecting the usage points in the city with the biomethane/waste treatment plant.

There is even enough methane left over to feed the excess into the national pipeline grid.

Germany is converting to CNG as a transportation fuel and has over 5,000 CNG filling stations in a country about the size of Missouri and Iowa combined.

Don Hirschberg says

“Lünen will be the first city in the world receiving electricity via public utility companies that was generated on the base of animal waste.[2] The plant will produce up to 6.6MW, to supply 26,000 homes with heat and electricity.[3]” Wikapedia. 6,600,000 watts/ 90,000 people is73 average watts per person, that is, it can be “up to.” 73 watts per erson. By contrast my average usage is1000 watts, but if I were heating water, drying clothes while the AC/heat pump were running I'd need several KW more. The article I read made no mention of supplying all the city's energy needs. Obviouly it can't and this would have been known to all long before the system was built.

Ferdinand E. Banks says

Dumb Merkel is after another term in the German parliament. Selling out the German economy is a small price for that reward, and frankly I dont care if she gets it. But if Germany dumps nuclear my electric bill might double. I wont both going into what that could mean..

Don Hirschberg says

Don Hirschberg says

“Description of Project

Ttiane GmbH is constructing two 800 MW ultra super critical (USC) coal- fired power plants in Germany:a condensing power plant at Lunen... “ In the ultra green city of Lunen!

Unfortunately the entry was not dated. Seems a bit odd that I can find so little about a 6.6 MW manure plant built or to be built and a 800 MW built or to be built in Luenen. There are dozens of sites about their hotels.