Excess Petrol

[Riverlander]

Hi. Just wondering. With the push for EV's will there end up being excess petrol in the world. There will always be a need to refine for heavy and lite diesel and jet fuel so petrol will always be produced as a by-product without a market. Perhaps one should purchase a V8 Nissan Patrol as it may get very cheap to run or perhaps they could build a big power station to run on petrol to charge all those EV's. Just a thought.
Cheers John

[dream4red]

John,
Our 2019 Nissan patrol v8 is a great tow vehicle. The best that we have had, but the petrol consumption is diabolical. We did expect that to be difficult but as safety was our main reason for buying it, we have no regrets about the poverty that it could cause.

[supersparky]

I think that until there is no need to produce jet fuel we will always have petrol and diesel available in some shape or form. But it looks rather obvious that our present federal govt is hell bent on pushing towards an EV only world.
I'm not so sure that I would be buying a V8 anything, as I would expect that a future govt will legislate against ICE's anyway. There aren't any old cars on the road in Japan, because the rules don't allow it. Not too many electric cars either, yet. But I'm sure that they will come. 10 metre long twin steer rigid trucks seem to be the highway transport of choice here in Japan at present. Who really knows what the future holds for any of us? I'm fairly happy to imagine that diesel fuel will be available for our touring needs until we are to old to drive. The big companies that donate to political parties have a vested interest in making sure that their business interests are well protected.

[T1 Terry]

Modern petroleum cracking uses catalysts to crack the crude oil using the Fischer–Tropsch process to produce what ever lighter hydrocarbons are required to produce what ever fuel they can sell.

Back in the early days, crude oil was boiled and the different hydrocarbons boiled off at different temperatures, diesel was a waste product and the petroleum industry was desperate to find a value path to sell this waste product.

The story goes that Rudolf Diesel originally designed his engine to run on vegetable oil that the general public could produce themselves. The petroleum companies knew that a modification to this engine could burn their waste product and this would create a value path for this waste product that was being used as a crude heating fuel to get rid of it, mixing it and the waste petroleum gases to fire the boilers in the distillation process.
Rudolf Diesel didn't want any part of it, he invented his engine to get away from the steam engine that killed his father and to get away from reliance on the coal barons, he didn't just want to jump from one fuel monopoly to another.

Mystery surrounds his drowning at sea while traveling aboard the steamship Dresden, but his heirs soon accepted the petroleum industries offers to buy the engine design that they immediately altered to burn this waste oil rather than vegetable oil .....

It wasn't until this new method of fuel cracking came on line that diesel wasn't still a cheaper waste product, since then, petrol is the cheaper product, but the heavy automotive industry was well and truly hooked on diesel fuel and virtually no heavy vehicle petrol engines are produced today ....

Now consider this, with the money stream from petrol sales and reduced income from diesel sales with this new kid on the block, the electric vehicle, the price must go up per ltr to cover the expensive process of cruel oil to fuel value adding, this will bring synthetic fuels and oils into a better price parity, again, reducing the sales of crude oil value added products ... till it is no longer a money making revenue path .....

All the while, the synthetic production of fuels and lubricating oils is going ahead at full speed along with the electric transport industry and the battery and fuel cell industry getting a free ride on the EV industries coat tails .... it is already happening, not something to put in the "not in my life time" basket, "clean energy" and "air quality improvements" are handy tag lines, but the reality is, either we embrace the change or suffer the consequences, the govts already understand how fast things are changing, they are looking for ways to get the voters on side without having to "splash the cash" to get them to change .... they rely on the $$ from the vested interests for their next election funding, so they can't be seen to lean to heavily away from their "sponsors"

T1 Terry

[native pepper]

Believe it was peanut oil that the original diesel ran on Terry, if we had politicians with a working brain, they'd already be moving to seed oils for diesel fuels, lubricants and plastics, which are environmentally friendly compared to fossil oil products and emit 80% less harmful gases into the atmosphere. Wouldn't worry about whether Ev's take over diesel or petrol, the state of the world and what possibly lies ahead could well strand us without any fossil fuels in the near future. Aus has just a few weeks of fuel storage and we sold off our own fossil oils to overseas companies and it's just about all gone. When you consider it's getting closer and closer to conflicts between the major powers, getting fuel to Aus may well become impossible, unlike in the past, today they can track fuel tankers anywhere and sink them for hundreds and thousands of klms away. So our industries will shut down because all the commodities and processed foods we rely upon will no longer be available. Yet our wonderful pollies that the masses vote for, continue down the economic growth path, which really is the corporate profit growth path and to do that, they have to import more consumers, hence the millions being brought here.

We have no backup plan for anything to do with the foreseeable future and if you believe the article linked below, we may not even make it to the end of this decade without catastrophic consequences. When you have sea temperatures off Sydney of 29deg and in other places 38deg, you're opening the door to extremes we have no ability to control, or even counter. The climate changes are more than 70 years ahead of the scientific predictions, which is rather frightening. Yet this was predicted by scientists back in 1988 and no one tool any notice, just put it off and hoped for the best.

https://www.theage.com.au/environment/c ... 5fdvm.html

Then we have the other elephant in the room, the rapidly growing incidence of deadly cancers in the younger generations around the planet. In my opinion cause by the chemically saturated foods of today and those chemicals come from fossil oil, add fossil oil microplastics in everything produced, including water and they are just a few of the insurmountable problems life on earth faces.

Makes me laugh and feel sad how everyone mocks my approach to life, yet refuse to listen to the glaring facts, just continue down the road that's killing them and the future. Fools being fools and living deeply in ideological denial, we aren't that smart a race, but rather fatalistically stupid.

[T1 Terry]

Australia has a lot of oil and gas reserves NP, they are just sitting on it "just in case" The untapped gas reserves can produce synthetic fuels and oils right now, not something off in the distant future ... like clean coal and CO2 capture and conversion to a less harmful product .... like the idea of picking up a t*rd by the clean end, the idea doesn't match the reality ......
We have a lot of nuclear power available, thankfully the reactor is quite a distance away, warms and lights up the area during the day and is reflected of a closer rock at night to provide a reduced level of light ..... That rock also works on the water, dragging it closer when in the area, and the changes in temperature the big reactor causes between day and night causes air to move around and water to move from the cold places to the hot places .... why not use all these benefits that big nuclear powered ball provides, rather than digging up or pumping up and altering the essence of animals and vegetation long dead ...... If we head into an ice age, then sure, dig it up and use the carbon in the atmosphere to trap some of the warmth the big nuclear ball provides, but we certainly aren't heading into an ice age any time soon, so leave it in storage for future generations that might need it .....

T1 Terry

[BernieQ2]

The people that bought Maryborough sugar factory wanted to produce ethanol and diesel from sugar cane.... council po poed it, said to dangerous close to the city.
Bernie.

[supersparky]

The Stanwell power plant adjacent to the Woongoolba sugar mill in SE Qld has been producing electricity from the gas produced by a biomass for years now. It uses all the cane trash produced by the mill, and all the green waste collected from the Gold Coast. It runs night and day. The mill produces sugar, ethanol and methylated spirits and I'm not sure what else. The cane season adds to the output potential.
Most waste water treatment plants are now using the methane created by the waste processing to fire what they call cogen plants, which is basically a diesel genset modified to run on methane. The methane was just discharged to atmosphere years back, but the boffins realised that it could have a reuse purpose. They blame cows for all the methane in our atmosphere, but I reckon it's people that are the main cause. Anywhere that has a reticulated sewerage system is making methane, lots of it.

[supersparky]

T1, there is no such thing as clean coal, as you are surely aware. An ex premier of Qld starting spouting that dribble years ago it didn't do him any good.
A good way to harvest CO2 is to plant trees, but half the world has chosen to do just the opposite. We clear forests at an unrealistic rate in some parts of the world.
We were down in Bicheno Tas just before covid hit and a long time local told us that the sea water temp had risen 1.5° since he first started monitoring. Green Sea turtles never seen in the area before had started apearing in the local harbour. We saw at least one. Just recently the sea temp on the GC got up to 30° , which is unprecedented, apparently.

[native pepper]

Terry, our fuel reserves the government has determined for the future are, petrol 27 days, diesel 32 days, jet fuel 27 days and we import 85% percent of usable fuel. Our extracted oil, is light crude and derived from the nth W shelf, it has to be shipped overseas and blended with heavier oil to be processed, because the two small refineries in Aus aren't capable of refining local oil.

The majority of Aus oil reserves are condensate, requiring heavy refinement and a lot of it is speculative, not proven. The majority of gas comes from the nth W shelf as well, all very vulnerable to anyone who wants to take it because we have a crap defence system which it totally reliant on the USA and the way it's going, may not be a reliable defence partner by the end of this year.

It matters not how much oil or gas reserves way have as more than 75% of gas is exported and close to 100% of oil is also exported to be refined. For Aus to have a viable energy future, we need viable sustainable plans in place and we don't have plans other than profit growth. Fracking gas is destroying water tables, rivers and arable land, purely for profit growth and nothing else. Burning gas is not much different to burning coal or oil, they all add to the climate problems we face.

That's why we need to get away from them as fast as possible and the only way to do that is to use seed oils whilst diesels become electric and for plastics and lubricants, this way we create a viable sustainable future. This would save the country billions a year and also give farmers guaranteed income for centuries. Having a Ev conversion industry for petrol vehicles using Aus made equipment and we already have businesses producing EV motors, batteries and equipment, as well as advanced panels, would secure our future transport needs and reduce pollution and green house gases dramatically.

It would be a simple matter to build Ev crate systems that would allow for fast low cost conversions of every vehicle, driving small business opportunities and people could pay for conversions with the money they use for petroleum fuels. Same with putting solar and batteries in every home and buildings, as well as centralised backup wind solar and batteries on small grids. Providing lots of business and job opportunities and paid off with the money saved for power bills.

There's a solution for every problem we face, problem is we have brain dead idiots running the country and the populace who is to scared, lazy or ideologically programmed to force positive changes. The election results in Tas prove how deluded we are, we had the biggest number of independents running who wanted positive changes, yet the majority voted for the major parties who have nothing but disaster ahead to offer.

Which to my mind is proof we have no hope of surviving much longer the way we are approaching the future, we have a rapidly changing climate with the worst really crazed deranged world leaders champing at the bit for war, social collapse worldwide and a growing pandemic of the younger generations developing cancers only seen in those ageing. When talking about this to older generations, they say we got through to now, but they don't consider our generations grew up on uncontaminated non pesticide foods, so got a reasonably good start. Today the young live on chemically saturated, pesticide ridden oily highly processed junk foods which are killing them young. We are consuming huge amounts of vegetable oils in our foods and they are also killing us, when I was young, we used fat from the meat for cooking, which was much better than highly processed chemically saturated vegetable oils.

You wouldn't put oil in your radiator, petrol in the sump or water in the fuel tank, yet humans today ingest large amounts of the wrong fuel, saturated with chemicals derived from fossil oil, then they take medication also derived from fuel oil to cover the symptoms. Makes no sense to me, all one can do is watch the passing parade of disaster after human disaster. No good advising people to look at their life approach, everyone has their heads in sand and abuse anyone who points out the reality of their life.

There's so many lovely people I come across, it's really saddening they are so blind, ignorant or in denial. A keyboard player we played with for years died a few weeks ago from bowel cancer, when he was diagnosed advised him to change his diet and he'd be right, but he ignored me and relied upon the medical profession. To visit him in palliative care was awful, he was so drugged on opioids which did nothing for the pain just dismantled his brain and hastened his demise. yet if he had just changed his diet and life approach, he'd still be playing as it took over 3 years for him to go from realising he had a problem, to a horrible drug induced death.

Said to much, my apologies if upset anyone, have to go and get ready as we are playing today, which will be an enjoyable relief. Always enjoy watching people having fun and dancing, live music sure gives people the chance to let their hair down and forget their worries for a few hours and that's always been our aim.