So You Think We’re Reducing Fossil Fuel? — Think Again

[butasha + 123]

So You Think We’re Reducing Fossil Fuel? — Think Again

If you think we’ve been doing a reasonable job of curbing fossil fuel use, you are sadly mistaken. Global energy demand grew yet again in 2018, by 2.3%, its fastest pace in ten years. 70% of that was provided by fossil fuel, and only 30% by renewables and nuclear.

 

America is awash in new oil, recently setting a new record of 12 million barrels/day.

DOE EERE

Until growth in renewables exceeds that of fossil fuels, and by a lot, we will make no headway against the environmental problems we need to solve in the next two decades.

Renewables and fully electric vehicles aside, all fossil fuels are increasing worldwide primarily because of economic growth in the developing world. Even coal is increasing worldwide, producing more power than hydro, nuclear and renewables combined.

While the developed world is switching from coal to natural gas, the developing world sees coal as their savior. This not because coal is cheapest – it’s not.

Of all energy sources, coal is merely the easiest to set up. Coal is the easiest to install in a poor or developing country that has little existing infrastructure. It is the easiest to transport – by ship, rail and truck. It is straightforward to build a coal-fired power plant. And to operate it.

China is taking advantage of this situation with their ‘One Belt, One Road’ project, a 21^st century version of the Silk Road that plans to build over a trillion dollars of infrastructure in developing countries, making those countries major commercial partners with, and majorly dependent on, China.

 

While it is easiest to build a natural gas-fired power plant, it is not at all easy to support it. Natural gas requires more infrastructure than any other energy source – for transporting the gas in pipelines, liquefying facilities and special terminals; and for storing it, often deep underground in geologic formations.

In the developing world, large-scale renewables are not effective since there is no baseload to support them, no back-up sources to load-follow the intermittency, and no extensive high-voltage distribution system. Hydro is possible in the developing world, but is limited physiographically.

No, coal is the obvious energy source to bring a country’s starving people up into the modern world. After that, they may have the luxury to care about the planet. And that’s the seemingly insurmountable hurdle facing any plan to mitigate global warming.

Just ask China.

So don’t look for coal to decrease anytime soon on the global stage.

On the other hand, natural gas accounted for nearly half of the world’s growth in energy demand last year, increasing by almost 5%, with most of the higher consumption coming from China and the United States, says International Energy Agency.

Oil demand increased by almost 600 million barrels last year.

 

As a result of new fracking technologies that expanded dramatically in 2010, onshore tight oil development continues to be the main driver of total U.S. crude oil production, and should grow to almost 70% of domestic production by 2030. The U.S.is now a net exporter of petroleum.

EIA

And the United States was right there to provide it (see figure). For the first time in history, the United States is producing over 12 million barrels of crude oil per day. Wells in Texas, offshore in the Gulf of Mexico, and in Oklahoma reached record production levels.

Although coal demand continues to drop in America, natural gas consumption rose to its highest level since record-keeping began in the 1970s.

Renewables have grown rapidly relative to themselves, but are still small with respect to fossil fuel growth. In fact, just the growth in fossil fuel last year exceeded the growth in renewables over the same time period. China emplaced over 6x the amount of renewable energy than the United States did, but that didn’t make a dent in their emissions since they emplaced a lot more coal and gas, and produced even more oil.

Nuclear and hydro are level worldwide, and are predicted to grow only moderately in the next few decades.

Your response to these numbers will depend on your view of the world. If you care about climate change, it should alarm you, especially since last month was the hottest June on record since we began to measure such things in the 1880s.

If you don’t care, you may be ecstatic at the sheer magnitude of energy humans are harnessing. And this energy is the cheapest it’s been in the history of Homo sapiens. With new drilling technologies that include walking drill rigs that pick themselves up and walk to the next site, it’s just become too easy to get fossil fuels out of the ground (see figure).

 

New technology has revolutionized drilling, like Patterson-UTI’s APEX WALKING® drill rig shown here in West Texas. This rig uses hydraulic feet to ‘walk’ from one drill site to another.

Patterson-UTI

On the other hand, more energy means less poverty. In the developing world, there are still over a billion people that have no access to electricity, whatsoever. 2 billion people still burn wood and manure as their main source of energy. And 3 billion more people will be born in the next 30 years.

This is a lot of people that will require a lot of energy. Just to survive. To have a reasonable life, they will need at least 3,000 kWhs per person per year. Together with everyone else, that’s about 35 trillion kWhs per year, 40% more than all the electricity produced in the world today, and the minimum amount of energy needed to eradicate global poverty and its evil stepchildren, war and terrorism.

We can do this with or without fossil fuels. To do it with fossil fuels just means continuing on with business as usual. To do it without fossil fuels means some major changes, the minimum being:

– stop building any new fossil fuel plants as soon as possible

– 3,500,000 new MW of wind turbines (12 trillion kWhs/year)

– 1,400,000 MW new nuclear reactors, particularly SMRs that are especially ideal for load-following renewables  (11 trillion kWhs/year)

– 2,100,000 MW of new solar (7 trillion kWhs/year)

– 1,200,000 new MW of hydro w/80,000 MW existing (7 trillion kWhs/yr)

– secure sources of Li, Co, Fe and other metals needed to build these alternatives, especially to build the batteries for enough fully electric vehicles to replace oil.

– build a fleet of 3 billion fully electric vehicles by 2050, much fewer will not sufficiently drop our consumption of oil.

It turns out that the cost of this new low-carbon mix is about the same as business-as-usual, $65 trillion versus $63 trillion, over about 30 years. It’s just that more of the total cost is in up-front capital costs instead of fuel costs – $28 trillion versus $11 trillion. It will take over 12 billion tons of steel alone for that much renewables.

It might not be possible in our present global political climate to achieve a truly low-carbon energy world, but we really should try.

Forbes

-I typically just lurk on this form and want to say in advance sorry for the copy and paste article. Just thought some here might find it interesting and I will enjoy the commentary from this forum on the content.

[cbrasher1 + 272]

If you think we’ve been doing a reasonable job of curbing fossil fuel use, you are sadly mistaken. Global energy demand grew yet again in 2018, by 2.3%, its fastest pace in ten years. 70% of that was provided by fossil fuel, and only 30% by renewables and nuclear.

 

America is awash in new oil, recently setting a new record of 12 million barrels/day.

With new drilling technologies that include walking drill rigs that pick themselves up and walk to the next site, it’s just become too easy to get fossil fuels out of the ground (see figure).

 All this sounds good to me.  I am with a Nabors X rig on a 4 well pad, we just finished a well and they also "walked" rig over to next well, neat process and cost efficient without having to get rig movers, cranes, etc.  The green new dummies will find your info. to be disappointing 😁

[Tom Kirkman + 8,860]

I keep repeating, demand for oil & gas is not going away any time soon, for many, many decades.  

The global demand for oil & gas just keeps steadily increasing, year after year after year after year after decade after decade after decade.

What I found the most interesting about the article is the rationale for developing countries using coal energy sources.  For years, I had blithely assumed that it was simply because coal is (relatively) dirt cheap compared to other energy sources.  But it turns out that the prerequisite infrastructure needed for non-coal energy sources is simply non-existent or severely lacking.  This would indeed seem to make coal the logical choice. 

Paris Accord and Green New Deal socialist nonsense fail to take any of these energy infrastructure realities into account for large chunks of the world.  Like for most of Africa and much of Asia. 

China's Belt and Road Initiative will progress and likely succeed - at least to some extent - while the Paris Accord and Green New Deal will posture endlessly, but provide little actual accomplishment. 

4 hours ago, butasha said:

While the developed world is switching from coal to natural gas, the developing world sees coal as their savior. This not because coal is cheapest – it’s not.

Of all energy sources, coal is merely the easiest to set up. Coal is the easiest to install in a poor or developing country that has little existing infrastructure. It is the easiest to transport – by ship, rail and truck. It is straightforward to build a coal-fired power plant. And to operate it.

China is taking advantage of this situation with their ‘One Belt, One Road’ project, a 21^st century version of the Silk Road that plans to build over a trillion dollars of infrastructure in developing countries, making those countries major commercial partners with, and majorly dependent on, China.

While it is easiest to build a natural gas-fired power plant, it is not at all easy to support it. Natural gas requires more infrastructure than any other energy source – for transporting the gas in pipelines, liquefying facilities and special terminals; and for storing it, often deep underground in geologic formations.

In the developing world, large-scale renewables are not effective since there is no baseload to support them, no back-up sources to load-follow the intermittency, and no extensive high-voltage distribution system. Hydro is possible in the developing world, but is limited physiographically.

No, coal is the obvious energy source to bring a country’s starving people up into the modern world. After that, they may have the luxury to care about the planet. And that’s the seemingly insurmountable hurdle facing any plan to mitigate global warming.

Just ask China.

So don’t look for coal to decrease anytime soon on the global stage.

 

[Jan van Eck + 7,558]

The idea that the world society has the capability to manufacture, and distribute, three billion new electric vehicles is (in my mind) preposterous. Even if the ability to manufacture that huge volume of such machines could be found, there is zero ability to distribute them.

Remember that distribution means more than simply putting such autos on a boat and sending them out to, say, the Congo.  Now what?  Where do the prospective buyers raise the cash to buy them?  Those electrics have been proven to be expensive machines. There is this irreducible cost with the combination of intricate motors and even more intricate electronics and batteries, plus the demands of lightweight car bodies, to dramatically reduce manufacturing costs.  And you have to couple that with the utter inability of third-world electric systems to provide the recharge power.  If the buyers have no cash (and they don't), then they also do not have the credit to buy anything expensive on a conditional sales contract, the typical path for financing.  So the product cannot be distributed. 

More logically, the world will continue with the development of the bicycle and the electric bicycle.  "Fat tires" allow for greater loads, and advances in manufacturing make for cheaper components.  An interesting side market should develop in self-contained solar systems for self-recharging of the electric versions. All you really need is a small panel, or in the alternative a Sterling-cycle mirror-reflector generator (which is the way I see it going). 

Getting past the bicycle aspect, as for other electrical generation, I remain surprised at the low numbers for nuclear.  It is my conclusion that the only realistic way to go is for nuclear plants to be built on some assembly line basis, then the modules trucked out to where you want the power.  The nuclear plants are in turn designed to run on warhead fuel, so that there would be this massive amount of nuclear fuel readily available without the hassle of mining and refining uranium. 

Butasha, you asked for reactions, here you go!  Enjoy.

[remake it + 288]

15 hours ago, Tom Kirkman said:

What I found the most interesting about the article is the rationale for developing countries using coal energy sources.  For years, I had blithely assumed that it was simply because coal is (relatively) dirt cheap compared to other energy sources.  But it turns out that the prerequisite infrastructure needed for non-coal energy sources is simply non-existent or severely lacking.  This would indeed seem to make coal the logical choice. 

If coal is the logical choice then Africa should be awash with coal generation, and it is not.

[Enthalpic + 1,496]

20 hours ago, Tom Kirkman said:

I keep repeating, demand for oil & gas is not going away any time soon, for many, many decades. 

Consumer demands do not have to be respected (e.g. drugs).  Oil is a narcotic HaHa.

"a drug or other substance affecting mood or behavior and sold for nonmedical purposes."

[Enthalpic + 1,496]

12 hours ago, Jan van Eck said:

The idea that the world society has the capability to manufacture, and distribute, three billion new electric vehicles is (in my mind) preposterous.

50 years ago "we" put people on the moon essentially without computers - that idea was preposterous but was still pulled off.

[Rasmus Jorgensen + 1,169]

On 7/21/2019 at 7:42 AM, butasha said:

In the developing world, large-scale renewables are not effective since there is no baseload to support them, no back-up sources to load-follow the intermittency,

Yes and no. There is a certain tolerance for intermittency in the developing world. The real constraint in the developing world is finance as somewhat pointed out by @Jan van Eck. He is by the way onto something with those electric bikes - compare the lifetime costs (incl fueling) of a motor-cycle and an electric bike? if that starts taking on what will that do to fuel demand in the developing world and parts of Asia?

Also consider IMO 2020 - I am hearing from bunker trader friends that from january next year we should expect minimum 25 % increase in fuel costs. What do you think that will do for demand for electric vehicles? For example we are considering replacing my wifes car with a small electric for economic reasons - admittedly she drives max 20 miles a day, but still. My wifes current car will likely get sold to someone who will export to Africa where although it is 7 years old it will likely be way more fuel efficient than some of the stuff they drive around in. 

I by the way agree that fossil fuels will be part of our societies for a long time. But they will co-exist with renewables. 

[NickW + 2,714]

16 hours ago, remake it said:

If coal is the logical choice then Africa should be awash with coal generation, and it is not.

Yes- Kenya is a good example of a country that is moving away from fossil fuels. As well as Hydro it is utilising its geothermal, wind and solar resources. I think Oil only makes up about 20% of its electricity supply. I don't think it uses any coal.

[James Regan + 1,776]

12 hours ago, Enthalpic said:

50 years ago "we" put people on the moon essentially without computers - that idea was preposterous but was still pulled off.

Try breaking gravity without carbon based fuels , nothing would have mattered. Or did they really go???

[Enthalpic + 1,496]

2 hours ago, James Regan said:

Try breaking gravity without carbon based fuels , nothing would have mattered. Or did they really go???

Saturn V was almost entirely fueled using liquid hydrogen and oxygen (stage 1 had some kerosene).  So it certainly can be done with renewables... in theory.

[James Regan + 1,776]

3 minutes ago, Enthalpic said:

Saturn V was almost entirely fueled using liquid hydrogen and oxygen (stage 1 had some kerosene).  So it certainly can be done with renewables... in theory.

@Enthalpic Good answer, what I’m trying to get across is that without the space race we would have so much less science. I’m not a denialist I just feel that so much has been given by the carbon generation for humanity and now it’s being treated like the red headed stepchild.

Hey I’ll be first in line for an Electric motorbike that could perform like my Honda Fireblade unfortunately it’s a unicorn for many reasons.

i think there will have to be a fine balance for the foreseeable future in how we replace petroleum based products, I think petroleum free is complete pie in the sky not realistically possible at present.

Aahuumm off my chest now 👍🏻👍🏻

[DanilKa + 443]

On 7/21/2019 at 4:28 PM, Tom Kirkman said:

demand for oil & gas is not going away any time soon, for many, many decades

Oil demand will be destructed fairly soon - by concerns over its supply reliability in view of declining production and failure to increase recoverable reserves. We won't run out of stones, we just stop using them because what's left is too far away to reach or too ugly:)

[DanilKa + 443]

10 hours ago, Enthalpic said:

Saturn V was almost entirely fueled using liquid hydrogen and oxygen (stage 1 had some kerosene).  So it certainly can be done with renewables... in theory.

doubt they've used renewables in making H2 and O2; shall they do - it would add few more bucks to each kg of load lifted to space. 

It it can be done - doesn't make sense it should be done. Hydrogen economy is nice and clean, until you start looking at energy density and associated risks. What sh!ts me most - its all money wasted and human energy diverted from eradicating poverty which is the worst environmental disaster there is.

Edited July 23, 2019 by DanilKa
typo

[Rasmus Jorgensen + 1,169]

14 hours ago, James Regan said:

without the space race we would have so much less science

It actually makes me sad that politics doesn't have any visions anymore. And to be honest I think this is the fundamental problem facing Western societies - the lack of visions. 

That said, the above qoute could easily be used for as an argument for developing thorium reactors, renewables etc. i.e. we migth not see the benefit now, but damn it, lets do it. 

Edited July 23, 2019 by Rasmus Jorgensen

[ceo_energemsier + 1,818]

On 7/21/2019 at 12:08 AM, cbrasher1 said:

If you think we’ve been doing a reasonable job of curbing fossil fuel use, you are sadly mistaken. Global energy demand grew yet again in 2018, by 2.3%, its fastest pace in ten years. 70% of that was provided by fossil fuel, and only 30% by renewables and nuclear.

 

America is awash in new oil, recently setting a new record of 12 million barrels/day.

With new drilling technologies that include walking drill rigs that pick themselves up and walk to the next site, it’s just become too easy to get fossil fuels out of the ground (see figure).

 All this sounds good to me.  I am with a Nabors X rig on a 4 well pad, we just finished a well and they also "walked" rig over to next well, neat process and cost efficient without having to get rig movers, cranes, etc.  The green new dummies will find your info. to be disappointing 😁

Have you heard about the next gen of walking rigs since you have first hand experience of the walking rigs? essentially "Transformer Rigs"?

[cbrasher1 + 272]

8 hours ago, ceo_energemsier said:

Have you heard about the next gen of walking rigs since you have first hand experience of the walking rigs? essentially "Transformer Rigs"?

I have heard of those, have not seen one in person yet, they have some vids on youtube I think of the technology you are talking about, big savings on walking over to next well tho as opposed to rigging down and all that.

[ceo_energemsier + 1,818]

7 minutes ago, cbrasher1 said:

I have heard of those, have not seen one in person yet, they have some vids on youtube I think of the technology you are talking about, big savings on walking over to next well tho as opposed to rigging down and all that.

I saw a presentation of a rig tech that incorporates all the new hitech walking and drilling rigs that can do the "walk" , however these ones will have a more advanced feature of having capabilities to complete the wells with add ons and built ins, and they are on telescopic "advanced" tank tracks. They maintain onboard all hitech electronics for subsurface monitoring , real time data, etc and tons of safety features.

They essentially "transform" right in front of your eyes to suit the drilling/completion add ons, modifications etc .

Group of Texan, German and Norwegian and Swedish engineers. They had a "converted" older "walking" rig to their "transformer next gen rig" prototype. They were looking for an investor to finance the construction of an actual transformer rig.

[SERWIN + 749]

As much of the East Coast was in the throes of a midsummer heat wave, more than 50,000 New Yorkers lost power over the weekend as the city’s power company, Con Edison, struggled to repair the power grid damaged earlier in the week by a transformer fire. Following the blackout, Democrat New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo leveled blame on Con Edison, stating, “We’ve been through this situation [with] ConEd time & again & they should have been better prepared — period.”

However, the lion’s share of the blame resides not with Con Edison but with Cuomo and his “green” energy policies. As The Wall Street Journal reports, “A new state law the Governor signed last week requires 70% of state electricity to come from renewables by 2030 and 100% from ‘carbon-free’ sources by 2040. Meantime, the Governor has blocked three natural gas pipelines and mandated the premature shutdown of the Indian Point nuclear plant that supplies a quarter of New York City’s power.”

In short, Cuomo and his fellow leftists pass virtue-signaling legislation that does little other than crippling the power company with nearly impossible “green” regulatory standards — standards that also effectively jack up the cost of electricity for all New Yorkers for an inferior product. And to top it off, Cuomo has the gall to blame the power company for failing to meet customer demands.

It’s another classic case of Democrats instituting leftist polices that inevitably fail, but they then turn and blame the failure for their polices on their constituents.

 

This is hysterical, they keep shooting themselves in the foot and blaming the gun manufacturer, or the ammunition manufacturer, but never themselves..... I remember Democrats from a long ago gone era, but now its all about CHOOSING what laws they want to uphold and when, pointing fingers and playing the blame game. Even when there are signed documents that direct the blame squarely at themselves, they play the game.

 

[Jan van Eck + 7,558]

43 minutes ago, SERWIN said:

In short, Cuomo and his fellow leftists pass virtue-signaling legislation that does little other than crippling the power company with nearly impossible “green” regulatory standards — standards that also effectively jack up the cost of electricity for all New Yorkers for an inferior product. And to top it off, Cuomo has the gall to blame the power company for failing to meet customer demands.

It’s another classic case of Democrats instituting leftist polices that inevitably fail, but they then turn and blame the failure for their polices on their constituents

Remember that Governor Cuomo is another Yalie,  His class tended to be populated by conservatives, a lot from New York City and the banker class.  That crowd has historically chipped in for his various political campaigns.  Now the turf inside the State of New York has shifted, with NYC becoming very leftist and the Upstate staying rather conservative Republican.  To mollify the segments, he rolls with this "green" stuff. For example, he pumped in a ton of State cash for the rebuilding of a huge plant in either Buffalo or Niagara Falls, two cities next door to each other that at one time were industrial powerhouses but today basically bust, for presentation to Elon Musk for that "Solar Roof" manufacturing plant.  After vast tons of cash, no roof panels are rolling out, and probably never will. It was a Cuomo Hail-Mary Pass, an attempt to kick-start the dismal picture in old industrial New York, and it crashed.  

I don't think Cuomo is inherently opposed to nuclear power nor to the Indian Point power plant on the Hudson River, north of the City.  It simply makes for a convenient political target. And the owners of the plant are not politically savvy, and are easily painted into a corner.  One new power plant is a large natural-gas turbine installation in Westchester County, I think in the city of Yonkers, a suburb of NYC.  But nothing has the punch of a hefty nuke plant.  And yes, the costs of all of this folly is shoveled off onto the ratepayers.  

[Jan van Eck + 7,558]

On 7/23/2019 at 4:06 AM, Rasmus Jorgensen said:

It actually makes me sad that politics doesn't have any visions anymore.

Lots of politics has "visions."  Russia under Putin has a vision of resurrecting the old USSR, with dominance over Eastern Europe and much of Asia.  China has a vision of restoring the power domain of the old Imperial China.  Europe has a default vision of taking in the poor of Africa into their bosom.  Hungary has a vision of being for the Hungarians, everybody else stay out.  The Americans, the Canadians, the Mexicans, they have no vision.  That puts them right up there with Spain.  Oh, well. 

[Jan van Eck + 7,558]

On 7/22/2019 at 6:20 PM, DanilKa said:

Oil demand will be destructed fairly soon - by concerns over its supply reliability in view of declining production and failure to increase recoverable reserves.

I rather doubt that.  Oil can be made from plastics, from coal, even from the air.  Don't kid yourself: oil is here for the long haul. 

[DanilKa + 443]

5 hours ago, Jan van Eck said:

I rather doubt that.  Oil can be made from plastics, from coal, even from the air.  Don't kid yourself: oil is here for the long haul. 

I'm not loosing my sleep over running out of oil (heck, I'm a frac'er potentially positioned to benefit from increased interest!) but the kind of hydrocarbons you describing is an expensive type. Age of cheap oil coming to an end and this may be another pin to the overinflated bubble of debt-fueled financial system. Increase in energy prices is not deflationary and FED may get what they asking for - in spades

[David Jones + 84]

On ‎7‎/‎21‎/‎2019 at 7:42 AM, butasha said:

While the developed world is switching from coal to natural gas, the developing world sees coal as their savior. This not because coal is cheapest – it’s not.

Of all energy sources, coal is merely the easiest to set up. Coal is the easiest to install in a poor or developing country that has little existing infrastructure. It is the easiest to transport – by ship, rail and truck. It is straightforward to build a coal-fired power plant. And to operate it. 

Maybe on an industrial level but Renewables are not limited in this way as is coal. For instance, I doubt there is any incentive to construct tiny coal plants for homes while it's relatively easy to get solar powered lamps and probably even panel systems to remote areas. You don't see NASA installing coal power stations on their probes and for good reason. Of course, in space you get constant energy but if someone has no electricity at all, a solar panel and a small battery will do just fine. You can easily cook lunch with 0.5kWh using a mobile induction plate and a couple of small panels in combination with a battery will provide you with this energy easily, especially in countries with abundant sunlight such as India. People in developed/high income countries seem to think in a way that conforms to their experience of wasting tens of kWh per day for little to no reason. That's not relevant to improving living conditions for someone in India as an example.

My guess is that this US administration is pressuring a lot of countries to adopt or continue to use fossil fuels (including China, the Belt and Road Initiative is not specifically intended to construct coal stations from what I have read). When they are gone (I'm assuming the US is not about to become a one party nation), we should see this effectively in the wider world in terms of emissions and the next time the associated party installs such an administration it will have far less influence in the broader world since alternative energy would already be effective and competitive enough to push all manner of fossil fuels out of the market at a far greater pace.

The above covers a span of 10-14 years. Beyond that point, fossil fuels will be under intense pressure from alternatives. So while the 2050 targets for emissions are up in the air atm, the ultimate fate of fossil fuels this centuries has not changed. Especially in terms of dominance in the energy and transportation sectors.

Edited July 26, 2019 by David Jones

[David Jones + 84]

On ‎7‎/‎21‎/‎2019 at 7:42 AM, butasha said:

 

As a result of new fracking technologies that expanded dramatically in 2010, onshore tight oil development continues to be the main driver of total U.S. crude oil production, and should grow to almost 70% of domestic production by 2030. The U.S.is now a net exporter of petroleum.

EIA

And the United States was right there to provide it (see figure). For the first time in history, the United States is producing over 12 million barrels of crude oil per day. Wells in Texas, offshore in the Gulf of Mexico, and in Oklahoma reached record production levels. 

New technology has revolutionized drilling, like Patterson-UTI’s APEX WALKING® drill rig shown here in West Texas. This rig uses hydraulic feet to ‘walk’ from one drill site to another.

Patterson-UTI

On the other hand, more energy means less poverty. In the developing world, there are still over a billion people that have no access to electricity, whatsoever. 2 billion people still burn wood and manure as their main source of energy. And 3 billion more people will be born in the next 30 years.

This is a lot of people that will require a lot of energy. Just to survive. To have a reasonable life, they will need at least 3,000 kWhs per person per year.

Fracking for oil does not seem like a sound energy source. Wasn't there an article that mentioned oil wells were under reported by a considerable amount just recently? This looks like an attempt to hide the fact that less resource is being acquired per well. It's a symptom of declining resource availability when you have to drill more and more to get less and less. It really doesn't matter how fast you can drill a well or how economic it is to do this rapid drilling, what it actually means is that if you have to do this you're dealing with a inferior source of energy resources. The faster you drill, the quicker all the recoverables will be gone.

"This is a lot of people that will require a lot of energy. Just to survive. To have a reasonable life, they will need at least 3,000 kWhs per person per year."

The above is unlikely to be true if this is intended to be only electricity (no heating/cooling). Personally, I use about 800kWh of electivity annually for general appliances including washing/drying/cooking and I don't live in a 2nd or 3rd world country. So no, you don't need 3000kWh of electricity pre person for a reasonable life which includes all the basic necessities. You need something like 1000kWh-1500kWh at most today, likely far less in a few decades.

Edited July 26, 2019 by David Jones