I definately see what you are saying. However again, in another 10 years due to technological improvements, what is today $100 and $200 oil becomes $50 and $100 oil. This exact scenerio has been happing for years, and will probably continue to do so. That’s just my opinion though.
“Aren’t most road maintenance taxes collected as property taxes? If they are not, they could be.”
Most are collected as tolls - about 60%.
“Most are collected as tolls - about 60%.”
Maybe in a few eastern metro areas, not in most of the country. Also, tolls are usually earmarked for the particular road (maintenance and paying back bonds that were used to build the road).
Yes, Peak Oil happened in the early 70s in the USA, as forecast by Dr. Hubbard of Shell; from then on the US became more and more dependent on imports. But most resources are price-sensitive. As the price goes up, more resources become available. Canada alone has reserves almost as large as Saudi Arabia, and larger than any other country. These expensive resources take time to develop, as well as lots of money.
World Peak Oil is supposed to be around 2015 or so, if consumption keeps rising and no new producing reserves are added quickly. In my opinion, a short peak may occur then, but later the expensive reserves will start producing and at $150-$200/barrel, a lot more oil will become available. In any case, you will be driving a much more frugal car!!
Global warming is opening up the Arctic ocean for exploration ; and the Russians and other Northern countries (including the US) need to explore these araes, since they promise to hold a lot of oil.
That is possible, but I think it is somewhat risky to assume that future technology will always arrive just in time to save us from ourselves. I am concerned that worldwide energy use will increase faster than the technology can drive down the price; it is also likely that there will be some kind of limit on carbon emissions (resulting in a “carbon tax”) by then.
Well, I wished your opinion was right, but the cheap, easy to get at US oil orignally cost about $6-$8/barrel to produce. These are 70s and 80s figures.
Since then the equipment needed to bring oil up from 10,000 feet below sea level, and the depreciation of the US dollar have made $50 a figure which most companies would love to have, but don’t anticipate.
Oil from Canadian oilsands and heavy deposits in Venezuela, the 2 largest non-conventional reserves, is priced at about $60/barrel, and rising. The first oilsands oil came in at $18-$20 per barrel in the sixties and seventies. This oil is very labor-intensive and capital-intensive to produce, and the new environmental regs being imposed will soon raise the cost to $70+ per barrel.
Agree that a $200 oil may drop to $100 over time, but $50 is now cheap oil, and those reserves are rapidly depleting. Oil is priced for production purposes with the highest cost source ($50), not the lowest, which is the Middle East’s existing fields at 60 cents/barrel production cost. That’s why the Saudis have all this money.
There have been a number of studies as to what it takes to unseat oil as the main energy source for raod and sea transportation. The cost came to about $240/barrel for sufficient substitutes to affect the oil price!!
So, regardless of how much biofuel or other alternate fuel gets produced, it will not stop gasoline from rising to dizzy heights, like $7.50/gallon, the current European price.
You have to come up with 388,000,000 gallons a day, every day… That’s just gasoline, no diesel, no jet fuel…People just can’t grasp the size, the scale of this thing…You hear about guys messing around in their back yard with 20 gallons of fry-oil and a 5 gallon bucket of lye…Saving the planet…
Unfortunately, I think the price would have to be higher than $7-8/gallon at the pump to make widespread use of alternatives happen. As you said, that is the current price in europe and no alternative source is making any real inroads there. I do understand that most of the euro price is tax, but it is interesting that we don’t really see widespread use of electric vehicles (or other alternatives). At least most euro countries have a functional public transportation system. That tells me that americans will still be using gasoline/diesel almost exclusively when it hits $7-8/gallon, and probably beyond.
I agree, it is a very big deal. To put that number in some perspective, 388,000,000 gallons of gasoline represents about 4.7E13 BTUs (13,700,000 MW-hrs). Even if we assume electrical powered vehicles are 5 times more efficient than gasoline, that is the equivalent of about 115,000 MW of electrical generation operating 24/7. So we are talking about over 100 full size (1000 MWE) electrical power stations if we chose to replace all of our oil usage with electrical power. That is a huge amount of infrastructure (approximately 20% of the U.S.'s current electrical generation capacity). Just to install that much generation, we are talking about several 100 billion U.S. dollars, probably closer to a trillion U.S. dollars if you include the transmission upgrades. These are very rough estimates, but I would expect similar capital investments would be required for any large scale alternative energy source. Also, we are probably talking about 20-30 years of work at a minimum, probably more like 50 years.
Craig, you saved me the trouble of doing the calculations. Of course, nothing is totally black or white. In the absence of a major technical breakthrough, such as practical fuel cells with Hydrogen, our future here will be a mix of the following:
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Reduced vehicle size and engine size; more like the past with lost of econoboxes. (saving 20% in fuel cost)
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Lots of frugal diesels, in a variety of car and truck sizes.(saving 25% in fuel consumed)
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Lots of hybrids; Toyota has a crash program on in reducing the cost of the hybrid option. (saving 25% in fuel consumed)
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Many plug-in hybrids, including Chinese imports.(saving 40% in fuel consumed)
These figures are for that segment, not cumulative!
So we will save somewhere between 20 and 40% by the time most of the current fleet of cars is replaced. Say we save 30%, that is a reduction in oil imports of about 190 billion dollars.
Europe has put most of its cards on super efficient diesels, while the US will embrace a larger range of options. All it takes is more expensive gas.
I agree that reducing consumption is less painful than increasing capacity, in reality we probably need to do both anyway. From an economic point of view, reducing oil imports should be the first priority (due to the trade deficit), but over the longer term the developing world’s consumption will surpass the U.S. and drive the prices up anyway. Unless the U.S. somehow manages to become an energy exporter (very unlikely), these problems will be back in few decades unless there are some viable alternatives.
Air car ? No necessarily…but I wouldn’t be surprised if the solutions are some innate technology that jumps to the front that we never dreamed of.
Air car/ electrics could go a long way in displacing energy production…coal gasification and nat gas, areas we have an immediate chance for independence, are “outside of town energy producers” esp. if some other tech. came forth to “clean up” energy production.
I’ve been a big advocate of local energy production, where upwards of 30 % of our electricity is lost in transportation. Locally produced electicity is where the govt. should work to break up monopolies and big centralized energy production. I really feel THAT is the secret to U.S. independence. Then we could fuel these "gimmic"cars cheaply.
Distribution losses are given to be 7 % to 8 %…not 30 % by the energy Comp. producers. I believe it’s a ploy to maintain the status quo. and have had engineers tell me it’s much greater in reality.
Sure, all these “alternative” energy sources have been around for 30 or 40 years. The issue is that most were not, and still are not, cost competitive. It will take a lot more than $100/barrel to make most of them attractive. At some point bio-fuels may become competitive (without subsidies), but I don’t believe we a close to that price point yet. Many of these other technologies are not energy sources, simply move the energy production around. This is primarily an economic issue, not a technical issue.
What 7%, 8%, 30% losses are you referring to?
Caddyman, we are not talking pure electric cars; we’re discussuing plug-in hybrids, which will travel short distances on the battery and then switch over to the engine, just like regular hybrids. Plug-in hybrids have the advantage for commuters that they can travel about 60 miles a day on one charge, at least in the summer. Thus a careful driver could go for weeks without using any gas.
The amount saved, 30-50% of gas costs could pay for the difference in purchase price!
Agree that we have to work from both ends. The nice thing about the first energy crisis was that cars gained a great deal in efficiency in the 70s (catalytic converters) and the higher oil prices resulted in vastly increased supply.
The US will be increasingly more dependent on imports, no matter who ends up in the White House or what technical breakthroughs happen. Total oil consumed may remain static as improved utilization works its way through the system. The curent stock of motor vehicles has to be completely replaced, that takes 10-15 years.
So, 8-10 years from now we will have European gas prices, a steep gas guzzler tax, and other fleet mandated efficiencies over and above the CAFE standards. Unfortunately the US population and the vehicle fleet will be a lot larger in 10 years.
Increasing the public transit infrastructure will take 15-20 years as well.
That sounds about right, it’s not going to be pretty.
I wonder how steam powered vehicles would fare today. Not sure about the noise of them or anything, but if one lives out in the country and has no water bill to pay, steam power could be an option
Maybe Wall St traders should have to take delivery of their contracts of oil to stop messing with national resources.