What Cantarell means to you

A friend in the oil infrastructure business sent me an article the other day concerning the Cantarell oil field in Mexico. The gist of it wasn’t really a surprise: The Cantarell field has been in decline for a few years, producing 1.9 million barrels per day (mbpd) in 2006, compared to 2.1 mbpd in 2004. Pemex, the Mexican state-owned oil company, predicts that Cantarell will be down to 1.4 mbpd in 2008, with leaked insider memos positing a worst case scenario of 520,000 bpd in 2008. Why should you care?

The Cantarell field happens to be the second highest producing oil field in the world, after the Ghawar field in Saudi Arabia. They are two of the four oilfields in the world that produce over a million barrels a day. The Ghawar field itself is not looking particularly healthy. The Saudis have been pumping in seawater to get the oil out faster, and now the field is producing 55% seawater. Ghawar peaked in 1990 at 6.5 mbpd, and has declined by a third since then. The other two, Burgan in Kuwait and Daquing in China, are also in decline.

The oil industry is searching hard, especially at $70+ a barrel, but they haven’t found a million-barrel-a-day field since Cantarell in 1976. In the article mentioned above, an analyst with a worldwide oil investment bank put the chances of finding a replacement field for Cantarell at “slim to none.” Fourteen giant oilfields produce 20% of the world’s oil, and their average age is 43 years.

Last year, ExxonMobil issued a report on the world oil situation. They are predicting a worldwide decline in non-OPEC oil production within five years. Other observers of the oil situation, such as Michael Simmons, an international oil financier, say that Saudi Arabia, the heart of OPEC production, can’t sustain its present output for much longer. Of course, there are problems with all oil analyses in that oil-producing countries have been exaggerating their oil reserves in order to increase their OPEC production quotas and/or improve their credit ratings.

What I am writing about here is what is popularly known as “Peak Oil,” the point at which world oil production stops increasing and starts going down forever. It’s not the end of oil, just the end of cheap oil, and the end of having as much oil as we want. The Cantarell decline, the last of the big four, is ominous.

Many people denigrate the concept of peak oil, and point out that “the end of the world” has been predicted many times. To them I say two things:

1) What is it about the Late Miocene Period (~12 million years ago) that you don’t understand? The Late Miocene was the last time the earth was in the business of actually making oil. It hasn’t since then, and it isn’t likely to again till some continents get crunched up a few million years from now. The quantity in the ground was fixed long before we came on the scene. We are using it up. Ergo, at some point production will peak.

2) I can mistakenly predict the time of sunset a number of times.

Some oil industry analysts point to Canadian tar sands and Venezuelan Orinoco heavy oil as the sources that will keep going for a hundred years. The first problem with both these options is that they require heavy energy inputs to extract them. The tar sand is exactly what it sounds like - tar mixed with sand. It takes huge quantities of natural gas and water to produce steam to liquefy the stuff so it can be separated and purified. Canadians will want their declining natural gas production to heat their homes and make the oh-so-necessary nitrate fertilizer for large-scale agriculture. The Orinoco heavy oil has the same problem.

The second problem with a hundred years worth of tar and heavy oil is that global warming would continue and accelerate if we burned it all. I live on a mountain at 1200 feet, and I joke that I am going to put a dock at the bottom of my driveway so I can export my banana crop by boat to the other islands in the Vermont chain. Ok, an exaggeration, but someday southern Florida will remind you of Waterworld without the bad acting. Gulf Coast real estate is a bad investment even now.

Some analysts say that oil production is peaking right now. Others place it five to fifteen years from now. The optimists at the U.S. Energy Information Agency predict a peak in conventional oil around 2037. The production curve has a lot of variations in it from year to year, so we will only be able to determine the real statistical peak in hindsight. The exact timing is less important than the inescapable fact of it.

I have used the skydiver analogy before, but the concept of inevitability is apt in this case as well. We are in the position of skydivers free falling through a bank of clouds. We know the ground is down there, and we are heading towards it at deadly speed. We don’t know how far away it is. We don’t know how far from the ground the clouds end, so it’s a gamble to wait until we can see the situation clearly. If the clouds end at a hundred feet we’re going to feel really stupid for a second. Sweden has pulled the ripcord, and it is long past time for us to do the same.

It wouldn’t take much of a shortage to push oil prices to $160 a barrel (Think $6.50/gal gasoline and heating oil). How would you want your state of oil dependency to be when this happens? Think about how you earn your living, where your food comes from (especially in February), and how you heat your house.

In another essay I’ll write about the efforts of various groups, working mostly on a local basis, to reduce their dependency on fossil fuels.

Don Quixote, George Bush, and the Triumph of Doctrine

I recommend that you read Edith Grossman’s recent translation of Don Quixote, by Miguel de Cervantes. The book has just hit its 400th anniversary, and it still has many things to tell us. One of the more politically relevant themes in the adventures of the elderly madman is the concept of triumph of doctrine.

Don Quixote believes that he is a noble and mighty knight in a world of princesses, giants, evil sorcerers, and epic quests, but he keeps running into hard reality. Sometimes literally, in the case of the famous windmills. When the appearance and behavior of those around him fail to follow the rules laid out in books of chivalry, or the consequences of his actions don’t correspond to his noble intent, the coherence of his fantasy world is threatened. Whenever this happens, he obsesses on the sorcerers who place enchantments on the people and things around him. These enchanters make the giants look like windmills, the princesses look like peasant girls, and two contending armies look like flocks of sheep. His belief system is right – it is the world that is wrong.

This is an old theme in politics and religion. Shaking the rattle brings the rain. If the rain doesn’t arrive, then you didn’t shake the rattle hard enough. You didn’t shake it with sincerity. You violated another law and must do penance. You yourself are unworthy of rain. Pick your excuse. Shaking the rattle brings rain, dammit! Doctrine always triumphs.

This brings us to the Bush administration, the Republican dominated congress, and the various economists and political theoreticians who feed them ideas.

Supply side economics, also known as trickle-down economics, has failed, and failed repeatedly. Giving tax breaks to wealthy people and corporations is supposed to promote investment, stimulate the economy, increase the income of working people, and eventually increase tax revenue because of the increased economic activity. In reality, when Reagan and Bush I tried it, the deficit tripled, the economy went down, and ordinary folks watched their total tax bite go up and their paychecks lag behind their productivity. Now Bush II is trying it, with the same results. But the economy is great. The country produced 75,000 jobs last month, half the number needed to even keep up with new people coming into the job market, but it’s great. The deficit is rocketing up, but this will turn around if we make the tax cuts for millionaires permanent. Wages are stagnant, but the economy is great.

(Topical Note: The yearly deficit dropped slightly, as of the most recent calculation, and the Bush Administration is passing out the cigars. At the present, temporarily diminished rate of $300 billion, you and I and every infant and grandmother in this country are going deeper into debt by roughly $1,000 a year. That’s on top of the existing $27,000 per capita.)

Likewise, Iraq. Every justification for invading has been shown to be false. The expression “turning point” has become a grim joke. The bodies are piling up – ours killed by them, theirs killed by us, theirs killed by them. The vast majority of Iraqis want our army to leave. But we’re doing great. If only the enchanters, er, press would stop focusing on the negative.

Likewise, global warming. The Arctic is melting. The Antarctic is melting. Glaciers that have been around for 10,000 years are melting. 99.99% of the climatologists in the world agree that global warming is happening, we are causing it, it is dangerous, and that we only have a decade or so before it is too late to prevent disaster. But it’s just a theory that needs more study. We’re doing great, really.

There is such a thing as ideologically induced stupidity. The more narrow and fixed a person’s belief set, the less able they are to respond intelligently to reality. The neocons who run our country right now are prime examples of this. To them, all dissenting voices have become Quixote’s evil enchanters, trying to make success look like failure. Having a high office, a Ph.D. or a book deal doesn’t make any of these people smarter in a pragmatic sense. It just gives them better tools with which to justify the products of their imaginations.

The unflinching dedication of the character Don Quixote to his fantasy world harmed no one but himself, his horse Rocinante, his faithful squire Sancho Panza, and a few bewildered passers by. It is part of the charm and humor of the book. The refusal of Bush and his ilk to recognize the failure of their doctrine threatens us all.

The misadventures of both Don Quixote and George Bush should motivate each one of us to examine some personally cherished theory. Sacred doctrine comes in more flavors than Ben and Jerry’s. Socrates said that the unexamined life is not worth living. I would paraphrase that great heretic and say that the unexamined belief is not worth having. Or, to quote the 19th century scientist Thomas H. Huxley, “Sit down before fact as a little child, be prepared to give up every conceived notion, follow humbly wherever and whatever abysses nature leads, or you will learn nothing.”

Sex and guns and acting on impulse

The New York Times science section has been yielding some interesting articles, especially when they are considered together.

In the May 23rd issue, Nicholas Bakalar’s Vital Signs notes a study led by James R. Roney, a professor at U. Cal. Santa Barbara. In it, 39 heterosexual men were tested for their testosterone levels and their interest in children, and then photographed with neutral expressions. These photos were shown to 29 women who were asked to rate the men on several factors:

Likes children
Masculine
Physically attractive
Kind

Then they were asked whether they considered the men attractive as short or long term partners in a relationship.

Apparently women can see us a mile off. They were very good at picking the men who like children and rated the high testosterone men as attractive. What’s more, they picked the high testosterone men for short term relationships and the guys who liked children for long term relationships. All this from looking at a face in a photograph. If I was still single I’d be going to get my testosterone level tested.

For those of you heterosexual bachelors out there looking for a good time but worried about your hormonal manliness, fear not. There is a solution short of steroid injections. In the May 9th NYT, Benedict Carey writes about a study at Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois. 30 male students were tested for testosterone levels and then given an assignment. They had to disassemble something and then write how-to instructions on the process. Half got a board game called “Mousetrap,” and half got a handgun. The researchers measured testosterone levels a few minutes later and found that the while the board game group stayed the same, the gun handlers experienced a spike in testosterone. The second half of the experiment had the men taste a glass of water with a drop of hot sauce in it and then prepare a glass of water with however much hot sauce they wanted to add, ostensibly for the next test subject. The gun group with the high testosterone added, on average, three times as much hot sauce as the girlymen who disassembled the board game. The higher the testosterone, the more hot sauce. To paraphrase a common bumpersticker, “Guns don’t kill people, guys experiencing testosterone spikes from handling guns kill people.”

Ok, two interesting studies, but put them together and the mind staggers a bit. Does consistent gun handling over time bolster testosterone levels, giving NRA members some kind of edge in the dating game? Can your average guy improve his chances before a night on the town by fondling a “roscoe,” or will he just end up getting in a fight? Did medieval mashers get a leg up (and over) with the local wenches by handling a crossbow? Does the effect extend back to Cro-Magnon teenagers with spears? Or does this high testosterone level have to be present during fetal and early childhood development? This brings up another question: What about the testosterone levels of boys raised in gun-filled households? It would make a certain amount of sense that boys brought up in an environment filled with culturally defined symbols of power and violence and an adult male “under the influence” would experience elevated testosterone levels.

This brings me to another area of study: Lead poisoning. Various studies have found that
1) Children exposed to lead, with high levels in their tissue, suffer brain damage. This can result in lowered IQ scores and, significant for my line of thought, increased aggression and loss of impulse control.
2) Children who live in households where one or more adults engage in shooting sports, sometimes including the reloading of spent cartridges, are exposed to high levels of environmental lead, which shows up in their tissues. Shooters bring home ultra-fine lead dust on their clothes, on their skin, and in their hair, which builds up in the home environment. Handling and casting lead bullets at home increases the exposure.

Guns, testosterone, lead, poor impulse control, aggression, sexual attractiveness, short term vs. long term – you write the novel. Or perhaps the news item. The more I learn about how much unnoticed hormonal and neurological factors influence our lives, the less I am sure that we are really in control. Add the “smelly t-shirt experiment” and I wonder how many invisible hands are on my steering wheel. As we learn more about the subliminal cues that guide our actions, I think that we will evolve a more deterministic view of human behavior. Gotta go - I have this strange, overpowering impulse to disassemble a handgun.

An eternal document

I make it a point every year to read the Declaration of Independence on the 4th of July. It is a reminder of our origins as a nation, the spirit of those times, and our ever-present responsibility to the ideals of democracy. Fireworks, parades, ceremonies – these are all merely symbolic events. The Declaration is the intellectual and emotional foundation of the American experiment.

Courtesy of earlyamerica.com, here is the complete text of the Declaration of Independence. Please take the time to read the whole document. While we, today, concentrate on the first section, the list of grievances was most important to those who wrote it and signed it. You will notice several complaints that could apply to the behavior of our present George.

(Adopted by Congress on July 4, 1776)

The Unanimous Declaration of the Thirteen United States of America

When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bonds which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. --Such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his assent to laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of representation in the legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved representative houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the legislative powers, incapable of annihilation, have returned to the people at large for their exercise; the state remaining in the meantime exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavored to prevent the population of these states; for that purpose obstructing the laws for naturalization of foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migration hither, and raising the conditions of new appropriations of lands.

He has obstructed the administration of justice, by refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers.

He has made judges dependent on his will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, standing armies without the consent of our legislature.

He has affected to render the military independent of and superior to civil power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his assent to their acts of pretended legislation:

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by mock trial, from punishment for any murders which they should commit on the inhabitants of these states:

For cutting off our trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing taxes on us without our consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of trial by jury:

For transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offenses:

For abolishing the free system of English laws in a neighboring province, establishing therein an arbitrary government, and enlarging its boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule in these colonies:

For taking away our charters, abolishing our most valuable laws, and altering fundamentally the forms of our governments:

For suspending our own legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated government here, by declaring us out of his protection and waging war against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burned our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries to complete the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow citizens taken captive on the high seas to bear arms against their country, to become the executioners of their friends and brethren, or to fall themselves by their hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare, is undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these oppressions we have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms: our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have we been wanting in attention to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war, in peace friends.

We, therefore, the representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress, assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the name, and by the authority of the good people of these colonies, solemnly publish and declare, that these united colonies are, and of right ought to be free and independent states; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the state of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as free and independent states, they have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent states may of right do. And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.

New Hampshire: Josiah Bartlett, William Whipple, Matthew Thornton

Massachusetts: John Hancock, Samual Adams, John Adams, Robert Treat Paine, Elbridge Gerry

Rhode Island: Stephen Hopkins, William Ellery

Connecticut: Roger Sherman, Samuel Huntington, William Williams, Oliver Wolcott

New York: William Floyd, Philip Livingston, Francis Lewis, Lewis Morris

New Jersey: Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon, Francis Hopkinson, John Hart, Abraham Clark

Pennsylvania: Robert Morris, Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Franklin, John Morton, George Clymer, James Smith, George Taylor, James Wilson, George Ross

Delaware: Caesar Rodney, George Read, Thomas McKean

Maryland: Samuel Chase, William Paca, Thomas Stone, Charles Carroll of Carrollton

Virginia: George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison, Thomas Nelson, Jr., Francis Lightfoot Lee, Carter Braxton

North Carolina: William Hooper, Joseph Hewes, John Penn

South Carolina: Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward, Jr., Thomas Lynch, Jr., Arthur Middleton

Georgia: Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, George Walton

Source: The Pennsylvania Packet, July 8, 1776

A solar revolution?

Amidst the depressing news of war, global warming, nuclear proliferation, and the possible literary execution of Harry Potter, there is a glimmer of hope. No, not Rush Limbaugh’s arrest for possession of unauthorized Viagra. I’m talking about the possible transformation of the solar industry, and by necessity, the electric utility industry.

A friend in San Francisco forwarded me an article about the solar startup Nanosolar. The company has developed a method of making photovoltaic (PV) cells by printing them roll-to-roll, like a newspaper. To understand the significance of this, here’s a little primer on the technology.

The modern photovoltaic cell was invented at Bell Labs back in the mid fifties. The technology has stayed basically the same ever since. The manufacturer grows a single crystal of highly purified silicon and slices it into thin wafers. The wafers get “doped,” or infused with slight impurities. The junction between the layers in a wafer, when exposed to sunlight, act as an electron pump, moving the electrons out through a grid of wires applied to the surface. Voila, electricity from the sun. Manufacturers have improved the process, growing thin wafers instead of slicing them, growing multicrystalline wafers, and even applying a microthin layer of doped silicon to rolls of stainless steel sheet metal. It’s still purified silicon, and it still requires lots of energy, high heat, a vacuum chamber, and a precisely controlled environment. That is what makes the things so expensive, between $4 and $6 per watt retail.

The researchers at Nanosolar have used a newer chemistry, Copper Indium Gallium Diselenide, which doesn’t need any purified silicon. Their new process doesn’t need all that high heat and vacuum. It is a thin film process, so it doesn’t use much copper, indium, gallium, or selenium, either. They can print out PV cells by the yard on thin foil. They claim to be able to make PV modules for a fifth the cost of present technology. Their heavy hitting worldwide investors enhance the believability factor.

So what does this mean for you? It means that the cost of a PV system could drop by 40% That’s a better discount than any of the PV rebate programs out there. A good average price for a utility tied PV system is around $8 a watt. A 2,000 watt system would set you back $16k. Around New England you might get around 2,550 kilowatt-hours a year, or 7 kWh a day from this. A 20 year system life would work out to 51,000 kWh total. Divide that back through and you get an average lifetime electricity cost of $0.31 per kWh. Not thrilling. But, knock the Nanosolar 40% off and you get $0.19 per kWh. Add the new 30% federal tax credit and you are buying your solar electricity at $0.13 a kWh. Friends of mine pay more than that right now, and ten years hence we will all be as nostalgic about that price as we are for $1.50 a gallon at the pump. In short, it will be stupid not to install as much PV as you need to meet your personal demand.

A PV boom like this will have a number of effects. First, it will be license-the-technology-or-die for all the silicon-based PV companies out there. Second, it will halt a lot of investment in new conventional power plants and electrical transmission infrastructure. Hey, if people are making it at home…. Third, it will require some rethinking of the way power companies and regulators run our regional electrical grids. The present paradigm is huge centralized plants that produce power on demand 24-7, with scheduled yearly breaks for maintenance. In a Nanosolar America, a larger and larger percentage of the electricity going into the regional power pools will come from individual customers and vary according to daylight hours and local weather. Handling this will take some regulatory changes and technical innovation. Also, the increased demand for PV modules will increase the production of the electronics that connect them to the utility. Suppliers will multiply, production will ramp up, and costs will drop for that technology as well. This is the break that renewable energy advocates have been waiting for.

Cheap PV panels on millions of roofs would mean a significant reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, acid rain, and atmospheric mercury. It could end mountaintop removal coal mining in the Appalachians. The nuclear industry would look even more like a dumb idea. We’d need fewer of those huge power lines marching across the countryside. Finally, it would move us closer to that inevitable transition from non-renewable to renewable energy.

Smile – the future looks sunny.