Products Made from Crude Oil and Natural Gas

[TandW]

Plans are for elevators to be paired. No one goes up unless a linked elevator has a like number of passengers going down. Load sharing/balancing is the goal.

[azpete]

if you are thinking green is all good, look up black lake in china.
a green end product is great, but the process of getting all the materials to produce it, not so much. much progress is being made, and we will get there, just not all at once.

[radar]

Originally Posted by dizcom

Installed a 50 amp pedestal to plug the RV in a few years ago. Wife just took delivery of her Mach-E. Plugs are the same. Charges her 220 mile range up in a couple of hours. I don't even bother plugging it in more than once or twice a week. Went up to the summer place last weekend and installed one there too. Ford does a good job of helping find charging stations in its network and there are other networks around. Those chargers are super fast and it's so much cheaper than gas would be right now.

Yah. Those Mach E's are sweet lookin. We walk our chihuahua past a car park for an apartment building and have noticed an increasing amount of them there.

Re the charge station. We kind of went that route as well when we upgraded to a long range EV. Electrician came out and did a "power budget" (new term for me) and said if we wanted two charge stations, because of our 100 amp panel in our town house we would be limited to a 32 amp 240 volt EVSE inside and a 12 amp 240 volt EVSE outside. At the time we had two EV's and we were both still working so we said "make it so", although not at the same time as the 12 amp unit took awhile to come in. Anyway, they work well, and now that we are retired and down to 1 vehicle we have a guest spot as well. Or if the RV is parked in front of the garage then we just use the outside unit. Either way, its charged in the morning.

We live in an area that can suffer occasional power outages because of weather so we tend to keep it charged at 80 percent of better all the time. It has proven out to be prudent, especially during fire season.

Anyway, here are a couple pics of our solution.

The in the garage EVSE.



And the outside EVSE



And just in case, we are only a couple blocks from a 16 stall Supercharger and FLO fast charger location.



Cheers. Enjoy that mustang.

[bentjm]

Originally Posted by TandW

Plans are for elevators to be paired. No one goes up unless a linked elevator has a like number of passengers going down. Load sharing/balancing is the goal.

That will work perfectly every morning when people are going up to start work and every evening when people are going down after work.

I hope you were being facetious.

[RS505]

I do industrial stack emissions testing for a living. Over the past 30 years, I've done testing at thousands of facilities in the US. From what I've seen, nearly everything a person touches has fossil fuel inputs.

Specifically to the topic of oil and gas inputs, I'm familiar with a wind turbine factory. The steel tower sections it could be argued don't have any oil/gas-input (perhaps coal) but the paint sure does. The paint curing ovens use natural gas, and the big thermal oxidizer (used to control the VOC emissions from the curing paint to the atmosphere) use natural gas (a lot of it). So, I suppose if you use electricity of any source, there's oil and gas incorporated into the supply chain.

Battery cell dividers are made from plastic. The plastic factory use NG and NGL in the olefins furnaces (as a feedstock) that make the ethylene monomers. The furnaces themselves burn mostly waste hydrogen as a fuel. These are not small facilities. I know of one that has a 600 MW NG-fired power plant that supplies some of the electricity needed to run the plant.

A lot of refineries manufacture chemicals, many of which are the building blocks for everything that makes modern life modern. Fuels for internal combustion engines are profitable, especially with crack spreads where they currently are, but the chemical industry is far more profitable. None of the five refineries that were closed in the US last year were integrated with a chemical plant, and the integrated refineries that I'm familiar with are spending money, lots of it, expanding chemical production. You don't need to shed a tear for the oil industry, it's going to be just fine because all of the "green" things people are lining up to buy have huge amounts of their most expensive products incorporated into them at every level

[tetranz]

Originally Posted by carybosse

I don't know the numbers, but I would wager that the costs to get put that bottle of water in your fridge is primarily based on the price of crude. The costs of the bottle is probably significantly higher than the costs of the water in the bottle, and then you tack on the costs of the fuel for the truck to haul, it, etc.

Where I come from we had a pipe that carried water down the street into each house. We didn't need to buy water in plastic bottles.

[Ray,IN]

Originally Posted by Dutch Star Don

The last time oil went over $100 a barrel, the RV tire makers raised their prices by over $100-$200 per tire. No one ever explained how the manufacturing of one tire used a complete barrel of oil for construction. At least that's how it appeared. Just wait, tires will rocket up again.

I think electric cars are cool and would like to eventually have an electric truck if it can be towed. However, let the purchase of electric vehicles happen naturally over time. As stated by the OP, I've been telling friends the same thing all along, the Government seems to forget or not understand that EVERYTHING we use in our everyday life is made from oil. You just can't separate the oil used in fuel from the oil used to make products and charge at a different rate.

Here is another big question.....I'm sure many on here are landlords with small to large apartment buildings. Who is going to pay to have fifty 50amp charging stations installed at their fifty unit apartment building? This push for electric vehicles just hasn't been well thought out!!!

A friend already owns a Tesla. This is what he wrote me this morning.


"I am glad I have a new Rivian truck on order since last year. IT costs me no more than when I bought it in 2020 to charge up, about $11 for 320 miles. My wife’s Subaru Forester gets 25 mpg and it takes 13 gallons to go the same distance give or take a half gallon which at $4 a gallon costs $52 to go the same distance. And mine has little to no maintenance"

Needless to say, but he's trying to convince me to buy an electric vehicle; and I'm looking at a new Ford Lightning. I must wait though, Ford has already sold more than they can build for 2022.
They are not accepting any more orders for 2022 models, so a 2023 model is my target. The Ford Lightning @ $39,995 is not much more money than the gas model.


BTW, I read this morning gasoline is now projected to reach $10/G this summer.

[fagnaml]

The discussion from my original post has been great! There are a couple of postings I'd like to help clarify:

1) Pennzoil (Shell) engine oils are indeed made from natural gas using Shell's proprietary "gas to liquids" (GTL) technology. GTL technologies have been studied by major energy companies for decades with the end result that GTL is a expensive, very low margin alternative to traditional lube oil (or gasoline or diesel) manufacturing from crude oil. Shell is the only major energy company using GTL technology.

2) Manufacturing plastics from plant based oils is technically feasible however very uneconomic and there are no tax incentives to switch to a "renewable feedstock" for plastic manufacturing

3) Manufacturing Renewable Diesel (RD) and Sustainable Aviation (Jet) Fuel (SAF) from plant based oils is only economic thanks to tax incentives, carbon emissions credits, etc. If not for these economic incentives, manufacturing RD and SAF from "renewable feedstocks" would be a huge money losing endeavor.

[carybosse]

Originally Posted by rffowler55

Read an article today citing an internal Government report stating that green energy sources currently are subsidized 10 times more than fossil fuel and that the final energy cost to the consumer is 4 times higher. The 4 times higher cost, if true, brought to mind European articles I have read stating grid power costs in Europe have risen over 300%.

The Government study commented that the primary danger to the electrical grid from green energy is the inability to ramp up production during higher than predicted energy needs and the only solution is the use of batteries that are costly, short lived and are not environmentally favorable to produce.

The truth to this whole issue is impossible for the public to assess since both sides of the argument only report on data that supports their position but, you cannot argue with the end game being reflected in a 300% increase in your electric bill. Writing that check will be all of the confirmation the public needs to push back.

This is my major issue: I can't trust what anyone is telling me. Scientist have become so politicized, on both sides, that no one can provide me with the facts. Unfortunately, I am too far removed from industry today to trust I can dig up my own facts and trust them.

Originally Posted by TandW

Hadn't the grid failed in Texas recently?

YES.

Originally Posted by propchef

This has always been an issue. We've been working for years to even out the demand and storage is the holy grail. "Green" or otherwise, electrical demand isn't consistent. Never has been.

My electric bill hasn't tripled and has in fact gone down. However, my natural gas bill has nearly doubled.

I think the suggestion is that once the government quits subsidizing "green" energy, the price of electricity is going to rocket up.

I had a fixed rate contract for electricity for the last 2 years, had to sign up for a new contract starting June 1. My rate is going to increase about 25%. If I didn't sign the contract, it probably doubles.

Originally Posted by tetranz

Where I come from we had a pipe that carried water down the street into each house. We didn't need to buy water in plastic bottles.

I agree, I still drink the water out of the pipe. I actually weaned myself off of sodas (pop, for you northern fellows) and use a powdered drink mix with a few vitamins and caffeine. I reuse a plastic bottle for this, probably have filled it up 200 times or more with the same plastic bottle. At the same time, my granddaughter who wails that the world is going to end in a few years from global warning, so why should she plan for a future, probably goes thru 3-4 bottles a day, rarely recycles. As a professed dinosaur, I probably put out at least as much in my recycle bin as I do in my garbage, except for when I trim the trees in the yard.

I understand the COVID response to have sealed water bottles in certain environments, but in your home, a waste of a resource.

[Ray,IN]

Wonder why food prices are increasing? One reason might be, in Indiana 48% of all corn grown goes to the subsidized ethanol industry. Traditional crude oil is used during the production process, which results in a net gain of only 8,094 BTU per gallon of ethanol.

One gallonof gasoline contains 120,286 BTU, one gallon of ethanol contains 77,100 BTU. This means buying ethanol-free gasoline results in better fuel mileage and is not pressuring the food source.


One way to reduce oil consumption is to use the same formula we use to calculate MH power to weight ratio, 1 to 100. That would leave an auto weighing 4,000# with a 40 HP engine, the same ratio as most MH's and many semi-tractor trailer power units.

[propchef]

Originally Posted by Ray,IN

Wonder why food prices are increasing? One reason might be, in Indiana 48% of all corn grown goes to the subsidized ethanol industry. Traditional crude oil is used during the production process, which results in a net gain of 8,094 BTU.

That's dent corn, not people corn. It's also subsidized on the farmer's side.

More than 80% of the corn grown worldwide is for silage or industrial uses. That type of corn is not edible to humans.

[TandW]

Originally Posted by propchef

That's dent corn, not people corn. It's also subsidized on the farmer's side.

More than 80% of the corn grown worldwide is for silage or industrial uses. That type of corn is not edible to humans.

That doesn't make it right. I'd much rather subsidize the relief of world hunger with edible crops than to subsidize an ethanol plant owned by the Sheetz brothers.

[propchef]

Originally Posted by TandW

That doesn't make it right. I'd much rather subsidize the relief of world hunger with edible crops than to subsidize an ethanol plant owned by the Sheetz brothers.

You aren't subsidizing relief of world hunger. Price supports of corn, wheat, cotton, and soy have nothing to do with world hunger. We waste 40% of the food produced. We don't have a production problem, we have a distribution problem that predates COVID.

I agree that corn is a terrible source of alternate fuels. It's expensive to refine *and* grow, using tons of artificial fertilizers made out of - wait for it - petroleum. It's a dead end.

[TandW]

I'll stand on my statement about subsidizing the relief of world hunger. The returns would be much better than the current subsidization of pie in the sky BEVs, bird-murdering windfarms, and earth-wasting Solar.