Energy Returned on Energy Invested Thread pt 2 (EROEI) (merg

[pstarr]

Exhibit #1 - the Spindletop Oil Field in Texas

The following link is a photo of it in 1903:

>>> Please look at this picture <<<

No one can possibly tell me that thing had a high EROEI!!

I do believe everyone (at least everyone who is anyone) has told you

[TheDude]

If the East Texas oil field in the 30's was over-drilled by a factor of 10, that once again demonstrates my point: Tens or hundreds of thousands of additional feet were drilled compared to if an identical field was found today. Thousands of additional rigs and wells were constructed which did not need to be constructed, using up who knows how much additional steel, concrete, etc. Thousands of additional pumps were put into service that were unneccesary. And who knows how many additional miles of travel that maintenance people had to drive to maintain all those extra, unneccesary wells. Add all this up and you're talking about a production system which used a lot of energy, much of it wasted. Of course a Thunder Horse uses a lot of energy today, but since they have much better knowledge of oil production systems nowadays, less energy is wasted in the process.

As I said in my post about the gushers, I do not know how much oil all those amounted to, but even if it was a relatively small amount it does add to the waste created back then.

You're ignoring my point in the service of your preconceived conclusion, which is simply incorrect.

Handbook of Texas Online - EAST TEXAS OILFIELD

By early spring of 1931 the widely-spaced discoveries revealed the vastness of the field as hundreds of small operators began its unconventional development. Unlike earlier fields, such as Big Lakeqv or Yates,qv which were controlled by one or a few operators who developed them by an orderly plan, East Texas field had no plan and no governor. Many landowners carved their holdings into small mineral leases that could be measured in feet, offering them to the highest bidder and realizing from $1,800 to $3,000 per acre. As the leasing frenzy seized the five counties of the field, Kilgore became the center of the boom. In that small town, wells were drilled in the yards of homes and derrick legs touched those of the next drilling unit. One city block in Kilgore contained forty-four wells. Whether in town or on farms, independent operators were compelled to drill wells as quickly as possible to prevent neighboring producers from sucking up their oil. This principle, known as the rule of capture, guided the development of oilfields since the 1889 Pennsylvania Supreme Court decision gave ownership of oil to the one who captured it, even if part of that oil migrated from an adjoining lease. However, rapid development of a field signaled its early decline, because it decreased field pressure and damaged its gas or water drive mechanism. As a result, wells in such fields stopped flowing and were placed on pump. Adequate depletion of a field after its drive and pressure were damaged was nearly impossible, but as the East Texas field faced this peril in the spring of 1931, its operators gave little attention to that fact.

[pstarr]

If the East Texas oil field in the 30's was over-drilled by a factor of 10, that once again demonstrates my point: Tens or hundreds of thousands of additional feet were drilled compared to if an identical field was found today. Thousands of additional rigs and wells were constructed which did not need to be constructed, using up who knows how much additional steel, concrete, etc. Thousands of additional pumps were put into service that were unneccesary. And who knows how many additional miles of travel that maintenance people had to drive to maintain all those extra, unneccesary wells. Add all this up and you're talking about a production system which used a lot of energy, much of it wasted. Of course a Thunder Horse uses a lot of energy today, but since they have much better knowledge of oil production systems nowadays, less energy is wasted in the process.

As I said in my post about the gushers, I do not know how much oil all those amounted to, but even if it was a relatively small amount it does add to the waste created back then.

You're ignoring my point in the service of your preconceived conclusion, which is simply incorrect.

Handbook of Texas Online - EAST TEXAS OILFIELD

By early spring of 1931 the widely-spaced discoveries revealed the vastness of the field as hundreds of small operators began its unconventional development. Unlike earlier fields, such as Big Lakeqv or Yates,qv which were controlled by one or a few operators who developed them by an orderly plan, East Texas field had no plan and no governor. Many landowners carved their holdings into small mineral leases that could be measured in feet, offering them to the highest bidder and realizing from $1,800 to $3,000 per acre. As the leasing frenzy seized the five counties of the field, Kilgore became the center of the boom. In that small town, wells were drilled in the yards of homes and derrick legs touched those of the next drilling unit. One city block in Kilgore contained forty-four wells. Whether in town or on farms, independent operators were compelled to drill wells as quickly as possible to prevent neighboring producers from sucking up their oil. This principle, known as the rule of capture, guided the development of oilfields since the 1889 Pennsylvania Supreme Court decision gave ownership of oil to the one who captured it, even if part of that oil migrated from an adjoining lease. However, rapid development of a field signaled its early decline, because it decreased field pressure and damaged its gas or water drive mechanism. As a result, wells in such fields stopped flowing and were placed on pump. Adequate depletion of a field after its drive and pressure were damaged was nearly impossible, but as the East Texas field faced this peril in the spring of 1931, its operators gave little attention to that fact.

Isn't that what I said? The wells were not tired together so the 100:1 might have been 200:1, 1000:1, 1,000,000, or even more with a modern collection system of pipes, GOSP's, etc.

[OilFinder2]

@TheDude,

I'm not sure what your point is. Are you trying to say drilling too many wells makes the EROEI better? Or makes no difference? If they drilled 3,124 wells (as they should have) instead of 31,241 (as they did), those 3,124 wells would ultimately have recovered the same amount of oil (5 billion barrels, or whatever the URR of the field is/will be). And if you're also suggesting 3,124 wells would have recovered even more oil than 31,241 wells (because the additional wells ruined the field), then that makes my case because it says:

More wells = less total oil recovered

which makes the field design (as actually constructed) even more inefficient. This is not a debate about what the field design should have been, it's a debate about what the field design actually was. And, as you've pointed out, the field design actually was very inefficient.

Unless you're gonna tell me that constructing, installing and maintaining 31,241 wells uses the same amount of energy as 3,124 wells.

[OilFinder2]

Isn't that what I said? The wells were not tired together so the 100:1 might have been 200:1, 1000:1, 1,000,000, or even more with a modern collection system of pipes, GOSP's, etc.

As I just said to TheDude, this is not a debate about what the field design (or EROEI) of the field could have been if constructed with modern technology -- of course if the same field had been discovered recently the field design would have been more efficient and the EROEI would have been better (DUH!!). But that's not what happened. What did happen was they built 10 times more wells than they should have, which made the EROEI worse than it could have been.

In other words, the EROEI of an old/early, poorly-designed field such as Spindletop, Kern, East Texas or other such "low-hanging fruit" probably had about the same EROEI as more modern and well-designed fields such as the Bakken or some offshore stuff even though the latter are considered by peakers to be "high-hanging fruit." The reason for this, extending the metaphor, is because back then they did not know how to properly pick the fruit off the lower parts of the trees. Now that we've got more than a century of experience picking the fruit off of trees, we've gotten much better at it, and the stuff at the top of the tree takes about the same amount of energy to pick (per apple) as did the stuff in the lower part of the tree back in Days of Yore.

And as I've argued before, there is more fruit at the top of the tree, but that's another topic.

[TheDude]

@TheDude,

I'm not sure what your point is. Are you trying to say drilling too many wells makes the EROEI better? Or makes no difference? If they drilled 3,124 wells (as they should have) instead of 31,241 (as they did), those 3,124 wells would ultimately have recovered the same amount of oil (5 billion barrels, or whatever the URR of the field is/will be). And if you're also suggesting 3,124 wells would have recovered even more oil than 31,241 wells (because the additional wells ruined the field), then that makes my case because it says:

More wells = less total oil recovered

which makes the field design (as actually constructed) even more inefficient. This is not a debate about what the field design should have been, it's a debate about what the field design actually was. And, as you've pointed out, the field design actually was very inefficient.

Unless you're gonna tell me that constructing, installing and maintaining 31,241 wells uses the same amount of energy as 3,124 wells.

You're still disregarding what the article I linked to says: that almost all of the wells were drilled in the interest of greed, not efficiency of extraction. The initial producers at East Texas had varying yields, some examples are mentioned in the article; the Lou Della Crim No. 1 gave up 22 kb/d all on its own, more than any one of Thunder Horse's 25 individual subsea completions do, with only 3.5k feet of casing, instead of 26k for TH, to say nothing of the other differences involved between shallow onshore with strong water drive vs. deepwater offshore at high temperature and pressure. Factor in the additional mooring, pipelines, 1/25th of the hull, the PDQ, the risers, the completions...
Back to 1931: after the drilling rush had been on for about a year (including the insane examples mentioned above) the East Texas was yielding ca. 900 kb/d from 1200 wells. With some seismic surveying (which was then in its infancy) this could have been easily accomplished with far fewer wells, but the wildcatting was as unrestrained as the overall production which was soon to be clamped down by the TRC. Note also that the additional 30k wells were in the field's future. Most of those were for water injection I'd imagine, as it currently has a 98% water cut. With any luck ROCKMAN or rockdoc can clue you in further.

[mididoctors]

@TheDude,

I'm not sure what your point is. Are you trying to say drilling too many wells makes the EROEI better? Or makes no difference? If they drilled 3,124 wells (as they should have) instead of 31,241 (as they did), those 3,124 wells would ultimately have recovered the same amount of oil (5 billion barrels, or whatever the URR of the field is/will be). And if you're also suggesting 3,124 wells would have recovered even more oil than 31,241 wells (because the additional wells ruined the field), then that makes my case because it says:

More wells = less total oil recovered

which makes the field design (as actually constructed) even more inefficient. This is not a debate about what the field design should have been, it's a debate about what the field design actually was. And, as you've pointed out, the field design actually was very inefficient.

Unless you're gonna tell me that constructing, installing and maintaining 31,241 wells uses the same amount of energy as 3,124 wells.

You're still disregarding what the article I linked to says: that almost all of the wells were drilled in the interest of greed, not efficiency of extraction. The initial producers at East Texas had varying yields, some examples are mentioned in the article; the Lou Della Crim No. 1 gave up 22 kb/d all on its own, more than any one of Thunder Horse's 25 individual subsea completions do, with only 3.5k feet of casing, instead of 26k for TH, to say nothing of the other differences involved between shallow onshore with strong water drive vs. deepwater offshore at high temperature and pressure. Factor in the additional mooring, pipelines, 1/25th of the hull, the PDQ, the risers, the completions...
Back to 1931: after the drilling rush had been on for about a year (including the insane examples mentioned above) the East Texas was yielding ca. 900 kb/d from 1200 wells. With some seismic surveying (which was then in its infancy) this could have been easily accomplished with far fewer wells, but the wildcatting was as unrestrained as the overall production which was soon to be clamped down by the TRC. Note also that the additional 30k wells were in the field's future. Most of those were for water injection I'd imagine, as it currently has a 98% water cut. With any luck ROCKMAN or rockdoc can clue you in further.

your conflating two issues efficiency of extraction with ease of exploitation of the find

the fields couldn't support such blatant excessive exploitation if they were low EROEI..

the whole premise of this thread is backwards

[yesplease]

This issue is not how many wells were drilled then vs now. The issue is how much energy was invested for each barrel of oil then as opposed to now.

For example, in the US in 1930 the EROI for oil was at least 100 barrels returned for each barrel invested (i.e. EROI = >100:1), but declined to about 30:1 in 1970 to from 11 to 18: 1 in 2000 (Cleveland et al. 1984, Hall et al. 1986, Cleveland 2004). Similarly, Gagnon et al. (in preparation) have estimated that the EROI for global petroleum has been declining steadily in recent years.

EROEI

If you have a source that contradicts the work of Cleveland, Hall, Gagnon, etc, I would like to see it. Showing a bunch of pictures of fields of oil wells is not a debunking of the work they did. I am going to continue to believe that the EROI of oil has been falling over the years until I see some real evidence that this is not the case.

The problem here isn't the work of Cleveland, etc... But the oil drum post you referenced. This line specifically.

For example, in the US in 1930 the EROI for oil was at least 100 barrels returned for each barrel invested (i.e. EROI = >100:1), but declined to about 30:1 in 1970 to from 11 to 18: 1 in 2000 (Cleveland et al. 1984, Hall et al. 1986, Cleveland 2004)

In "Net energy from the extraction of oil and gas in the United States" for instance, the figures they refer to aren't the EROEI of oil in general, but the EROEI of extraction only. Here's the specific passage, emphasis added of course.

The EROI for petroleum and coal is calculated at the extraction stage of the resource transformation process. Only industrial energies are evaluated: the fossil fuel and electricity used directly and indirectly to extract petroleum. The costs include only those energies used to locate and extract petroleum and prepare it for shipment from the lease. Transportation and refining costs are excluded from this analysis.

The problem here is that we have the work by Cleveland and co specifically referring to extraction, but at TOD, it's used as the general EROEI w/o any qualification regarding the specifics Cleveland and co had.

Clearly the results of the previously mentioned paper are restricted to extraction only, and do not include refining or transportation. If we look at the EROEI of refining currently, we can see that it is at most around ~30+:1, which caps the EROEI of oil in general as an energy source at ~30:1. That isn't to say that oil extraction specifically didn't have a very high EROEI in the past, but that overall oil didn't have an EROEI of ~100:1 in the past. In fact, since refinery efficiency has almost certainly improved, and in one of it's earliest uses for kerosene, all the gasoline was dumped as a waste product, we're probably looking at a ~15-25:1 max EROEI even in it's heyday.

[yesplease]

Do not forget EROEI is an industrial recursive life-cycle analysis. Not an conversion efficiency measure. It is more just the refinery. If that is not understood then EROEI is not understood

You are correct that it is more than just the refinery, but it appears that you are having trouble understanding the rest of what I posted due to your mathematical impairment.

So please bear with us mathematically impaired folks.

Not funny. So don't do it again. That was a joke that I made, a comment, and I do not appreciate you digging up posts out of context. It is disingenuous at best and a distraction. I wonder why you need to resort to cheap tricks?

Cheap trick? Listen, there's no reason to hide trouble you may be having with a subject. Acceptance is the first step towards becoming a better you, maybe taking some more math classes or what have you. Besides, if you don't want me to include what you're saying, don't include me in your posts in the first place.

Dohboi's question remains unanswered. (Due perhaps to Yesplease bizarre inability to understand net energy analysis) So please bear with us mathematically impaired folks.

Going back to what you said, that EROEI is more than just the refinery. Since we can establish the EROEI of refining oil, then we have an upper bound for EROEI. An upper bound in this context is the greatest value something can have. Oil EROEI has the upper bound because we are assuming that everything else, extraction, equipment, transportation, etc... does not require energy. Because the EROEI of refining is ~30:1, and we don't include the energy needed for anything else in the industrial life-cycle analysis as you put it, that means the EROEI cannot be any higher than this given a similar comparison. If we include the energy needed for everything else, extraction, equipment, transportation, etc... This will only lower the EROEI of oil as an energy source.

You assumptions regarding net-energy analysis are flat out wrong. You apparently still do not understand the methodology. Once again you seem to mistake single-step energy-conversion losses (in the refinery) with cumulative energy losses.

A simple hypothetical (without lifetime infrastructure amortization).

For every 100 btu's of oil in the ground one must expend the following energies:
1 btu disappears into drilling and extracting all 100 btu's of oil,
1 btu disappears to refine all the 100 btu's of oil,
1 btu goes away to distribute and pump all the 100 btu's of oil,
in order to produce gasoline etc.

At the end of the day the energy returned to the society is 97 btu's. The energy expended to make the energy available to society is 3 btu's. The EROEI is 97/3 or 33.

Wow, first trouble with math, now problems with reading comprehension! I never said that a single step represented all of the energy losses, just that a single step presents an upper bound for oil's EROEI. Repeat after me, upper bound.

According to your example, since we're using ~3 btu of energy to refine ~100 btu of oil, which results in an EROEI of ~30+:1, the EROEI of oil in the industrial life-cycle analysis cannot be any high than this. I know this may be hard to understand, but adding energy for extraction and transportation will only lower the EROEI.

Granted, we can look at just extraction, and point out that the EROEI is and/or was very high, but that isn't a valid comparison since we would be comparing just one step in an industrial life-cycle, extraction at some time in the past, to the entire industrial life-cycle analysis like you mentioned, which includes refining, transportation, etc... Which is not a valid comparison. Comparing just one step in a process to all of the steps in a process is not a valid comparison.

Precisely and that is why the refinery is not some kind of benchmark. It is only one among many expenditures of energy measured against the total available for useful work outside the energy procurement system.

It's not a benchmark, it's an upper bound. Since refining is almost certainly as efficient today as it was in the past, it presents an upper bound to oil's EROEI, since, as per the example before, adding energy for extraction and transportation will ony lower oil's EROEI. In fact, when it was first refined primarily for kerosene, and the gasoline was dumped as a waste product, the refinery EROEI was probably somewhere around ~15:1, since we were dumping half of our energy products down the river so to speak.

If anyone is interested we could all have fun class and try the same with wind, or Saturian Methane like JD does

Speaking of classes I suggest looking into a math class or few at your community college since you seem to be having so much trouble with EROEI. Remember, when looking at the EROEI of a single step in a process, the EROEI of the process as a whole cannot be greater than that. The EROEI of refining is ~30:1, which means the EROEI of oil in general cannot be greater than ~30:1, since we would only add energy for extraction/transportation, resulting in a lower figure for oil's overall EROEI. I understand that you're having trouble with this, but if you work hard you can understand this sooner or later.

[TheDude]

The problem here is that we have the work by Cleveland and co specifically referring to extraction, but at TOD, it's used as the general EROEI w/o any qualification regarding the specifics Cleveland and co had.

The TOD paper is by "Charles A.S. Hall and the “EROI study team”" who reference themselves and Cleveland for that 100:1 figure. For 1970 "production" they list 20:1. Please quote the specific instance where they state these figures are for production, not including refining/transport, I can't find them. Searching the page for "refin" I find this, at least, in the comments:

A few things I haven't seen here:

1. Mention of the notion of "quantum efficiency". We use all of these forms of energy (coal, crude oil, gasoline, natural gas, solar, wind, geothermal) to either do mechanical work directly (as in the internal combustion engine) or to create electrical potential energy. No process will give 100% return on the investment; i.e. energy will be lost to friction, the BTU content of one form of energy will be lower, energy will go into phase changes, and so on. We talk about the EROEI of crude oil, but no one uses crude oil to run their car or heat their house. We should be talking about the percentage yield of the conversion process from crude oil to gasoline, for example, and the quantum efficiency of this process. Various catalysts can be used to alter the quantum efficiency for this process. Finally, when we've figured out the EROEI for gasoline, we can then estimate the Energy Return on Energy Invested when we figure the mileage per gallon per weight moved a set distance.

2. Amortized cost of the physical plant required to transform, store, or convert various forms of energy into mechanical or electrical energy. Most coal plants for electrical generation have planned lifetimes of 30 years or so, after which they are taken out of service or rebuilt. The same goes for nuclear plants, and both have associated costs for storage and treatment of wastes, such as coal ash and spent fuel rods and radioactive components. Same case for oil refineries and uranium enrichment plants. I see a lot of analysis of the costs of extraction and mining, but that's only a first step. Very few raw fuels are immediately usable to create mechanical or electrical power. Even coal must be pulverized and turned into a slurry, with addition of various other compounds to enhance the percentage burned.

Which engendered no further discussion. Permalink |

You might as well consider the efficiency of the ICE while you're at it.

[pstarr]

First of all, yesplease, you pulled a exchange from another thread, completely out of context, and so it remains a rhetorical devise, and a rather strange technique to use in internet forums. Do you keep a database of my comments? For a long time you used one of my comments in your signature. It's kind of sick obsession, you know. I might have to report your to the internet nurse for training You've been a very sick baby.

Yesplease, your idea that refinery costs are an upper bound also seems irrational and obsessive. Refinery energy costs are merely one among many. It might take 1 btu's for refinery energy to bring 100 btu's of final fuel product to market, whereas the transport might be 2, 10, or 99 btu's. In such case there is no logical way to attribute any special character to the refinery.

I am done with you. bye

[OilFinder2]

You're still disregarding what the article I linked to says: that almost all of the wells were drilled in the interest of greed, not efficiency of extraction. The initial producers at East Texas had varying yields, some examples are mentioned in the article; the Lou Della Crim No. 1 gave up 22 kb/d all on its own, more than any one of Thunder Horse's 25 individual subsea completions do, with only 3.5k feet of casing, instead of 26k for TH, to say nothing of the other differences involved between shallow onshore with strong water drive vs. deepwater offshore at high temperature and pressure. Factor in the additional mooring, pipelines, 1/25th of the hull, the PDQ, the risers, the completions...

That makes no difference to my argument. It doesn't matter if the excess of East Texas wells was done by design or by accident, the fact is is that there *was* an excess of wells, they didn't really know better back then, and the field design ended up being inefficient. Therefore a lot of energy was wasted and the EROEI probably wasn't all that great, probably no better than the "high hanging fruit" Bakken.

Back to 1931: after the drilling rush had been on for about a year (including the insane examples mentioned above) the East Texas was yielding ca. 900 kb/d from 1200 wells. With some seismic surveying (which was then in its infancy) this could have been easily accomplished with far fewer wells, but the wildcatting was as unrestrained as the overall production which was soon to be clamped down by the TRC. Note also that the additional 30k wells were in the field's future. Most of those were for water injection I'd imagine, as it currently has a 98% water cut. With any luck ROCKMAN or rockdoc can clue you in further.

900K bpd from 1200 wells = 750 bpd per well. That's pretty typical of Bakken wells these days. See reply immediately above.

[TheDude]

That makes no difference to my argument. It doesn't matter if the excess of East Texas wells was done by design or by accident, the fact is is that there *was* an excess of wells, they didn't really know better back then, and the field design ended up being inefficient.

You're not giving the reservoir engineers of that time any credit.

DOI: 10.1306/3D932AD8-16B1-11D7-8645000102C1865D
Interpretation of Bottom-Hole Pressures in East Texas Oil Field
E. V. Foran (2)
AAPG Bulletin
Volume 16 (1932)

Study of bottom-hole pressure in the East Texas oil pool has continued with the development of the field, resulting in the following information about reservoir conditions. The producing horizon is very sensitive to high differentials in reservoir pressure resulting from disproportionate drainage. The water head on the west side of the field can not maintain reservoir pressure properly except under conditions of proportionate and restricted withdrawal. The average well stops flowing when reservoir pressure is less than 800 pounds per square inch. The oil is unsaturated.

Interpretation of Bottom-Hole Pressures in East Texas Oil Field

[eastbay]

The Dude, you are our little gold mine of oil related information. Unreal. Don't you DARE leave this site!

[OilFinder2]

That makes no difference to my argument. It doesn't matter if the excess of East Texas wells was done by design or by accident, the fact is is that there *was* an excess of wells, they didn't really know better back then, and the field design ended up being inefficient.

You're not giving the reservoir engineers of that time any credit.

DOI: 10.1306/3D932AD8-16B1-11D7-8645000102C1865D
Interpretation of Bottom-Hole Pressures in East Texas Oil Field
E. V. Foran (2)
AAPG Bulletin
Volume 16 (1932)

Study of bottom-hole pressure in the East Texas oil pool has continued with the development of the field, resulting in the following information about reservoir conditions. The producing horizon is very sensitive to high differentials in reservoir pressure resulting from disproportionate drainage. The water head on the west side of the field can not maintain reservoir pressure properly except under conditions of proportionate and restricted withdrawal. The average well stops flowing when reservoir pressure is less than 800 pounds per square inch. The oil is unsaturated.

Interpretation of Bottom-Hole Pressures in East Texas Oil Field

Once again . . . what difference does this make? You keep telling me this field would have had a theoretically high EROEI if it had been developed such-and-such way. Well, it didn't get developed such-and-such way, and as a result its EROEI was much lower. We're talking about historical reality, not theoretical possibility. Maybe if Hitler hadn't invaded Poland and engaged in the Holocaust the world might be a better place now. But that's not what happened, so it's irrelevant to talk about it as historical fact. Likewise, maybe if the zillions of companies and speculators who developed the East Texas oil field had paid attention to those reservoir engineers, the oil field would have been a far more efficient operation. So what? That's not what actually happened, so it is irrelevant.

[yesplease]

The problem here is that we have the work by Cleveland and co specifically referring to extraction, but at TOD, it's used as the general EROEI w/o any qualification regarding the specifics Cleveland and co had.

The TOD paper is by "Charles A.S. Hall and the “EROI study team”" who reference themselves and Cleveland for that 100:1 figure. For 1970 "production" they list 20:1. Please quote the specific instance where they state these figures are for production, not including refining/transport, I can't find them.

If you would reread my post you should notice the reference but just for the heck of it the figures/statements are from a 2001 paper authored by Cleveland, "Net energy from the extraction of oil and gas in the United States" specifically. The data presented is either the same, or supersedes the data from the 80s paper AFAIK. The passage I quoted earlier regarding the distinction between extraction, transportation, and refining is from page 8 section 5 of the paper I just mentioned. The TOD post uses these figures too AFAIK, and it seems quite accurate since the EROEI in the graph on page 11 is 11:1 to 18:1 for 2000, exactly what the TOD post cited.

Searching the page for "refin" I find this, at least, in the comments:

A few things I haven't seen here:

1. Mention of the notion of "quantum efficiency". We use all of these forms of energy (coal, crude oil, gasoline, natural gas, solar, wind, geothermal) to either do mechanical work directly (as in the internal combustion engine) or to create electrical potential energy. No process will give 100% return on the investment; i.e. energy will be lost to friction, the BTU content of one form of energy will be lower, energy will go into phase changes, and so on. We talk about the EROEI of crude oil, but no one uses crude oil to run their car or heat their house. We should be talking about the percentage yield of the conversion process from crude oil to gasoline, for example, and the quantum efficiency of this process. Various catalysts can be used to alter the quantum efficiency for this process. Finally, when we've figured out the EROEI for gasoline, we can then estimate the Energy Return on Energy Invested when we figure the mileage per gallon per weight moved a set distance.

2. Amortized cost of the physical plant required to transform, store, or convert various forms of energy into mechanical or electrical energy. Most coal plants for electrical generation have planned lifetimes of 30 years or so, after which they are taken out of service or rebuilt. The same goes for nuclear plants, and both have associated costs for storage and treatment of wastes, such as coal ash and spent fuel rods and radioactive components. Same case for oil refineries and uranium enrichment plants. I see a lot of analysis of the costs of extraction and mining, but that's only a first step. Very few raw fuels are immediately usable to create mechanical or electrical power. Even coal must be pulverized and turned into a slurry, with addition of various other compounds to enhance the percentage burned.

Which engendered no further discussion. Permalink |

I suggest searching for the specific paper I mentioned as opposed to the link kublikhan posted if you're interested in my post.

You might as well consider the efficiency of the ICE while you're at it.

This has been discussed at TOD but not under EROEI strictly since it should depend on the efficacy use as well as the efficiency, and from there people go into exergy. Driving a 2 ton SUV getting 10mpg compared to a 1 ton car getting 20mpg, even if the car's engine isn't operating as efficiently as the SUVs, for the sake of "efficiency" is completely nuts. Anyway, that definitely doesn't result in a favorable comparison for oil compared to main stream alternatives since for example an EV can put ~70% of the energy a windmill or solar panel produces to use, compared to a typical conventional vehicle at ~15-20+% of the energy from the gasoline it uses.

Edited for errors

[yesplease]

Yesplease, your idea that refinery costs are an upper bound also seems irrational and obsessive.

I understand that you're having trouble with math pstarr, but if you keep trying you too may eventually understand the concept.

Refinery energy costs are merely one among many. It might take 1 btu's for refinery energy to bring 100 btu's of final fuel product to market, whereas the transport might be 2, 10, or 99 btu's. In such case there is no logical way to attribute any special character to the refinery.

I suppose I can try to explain this one more time...

We can establish an upper bound on oil's EROEI is because already know what the refinery EROEI is. Since it's almost certain that refinery efficiency has increased, not decreased, since oil was first extracted, transported, and refined, then we know that even with the EROEI of extraction at 100:1, since the EROEI of refining was at 30+:1 or less, oil's EROEI in the past could not have been greater than 30+:1, and given the difference in use (dumping gasoline/selling kerosene)/refinery tech, was probably ~15-25+:1.

I am done with you. bye

Even if you are done with me, god forbid, give math another try. Learning is good for you, I swear!

[yesplease]

Btw, the >100:1 EROEI cited in the 80s paper is for discoveries only since they differentiate between discovery EROEI and production EROEI, which clearly doesn't even include production/extraction (they seem to be used interchangeable by Cleveland and co) over the life of the well, just locating it and drilling till oil is hit. Specifically, the passage states the discovery EROEI was...

*Based on discovery rates reported by Hubbert and the assumption that energy used in drilling was less than one barrel per foot

So... Not only do the EROEI figures for the 1970s/2000s not include transportation or refining, but the >100:1 figure cited from the 1940s doesn't even include extraction/production over the life of the well, just the discovery of the oil. Of course this isn't a problem with the work of Cleveland and co, since they clearly stated what they were describing, but with the posts on TOD that fail to include this qualification of EROEI wrt discovery and extraction, as opposed to oil's EROEI as a whole since it includes discovery, extraction, transportation, and refining.

[yesplease]

Doh! As it turns out, from ~1700kWh of oil, and 150+kWh of natural gas + electricity, we get ~1450kWh of energetic fuels like gasoline, diesel, LPG, jet fuel, and so on, so at most the EROEI of oil delivered to the consumer could've been ~6+:1.

Course currently, oil is around 3:1, at least in the U.S. and when used we only get about 15-45% of it's energy depending on the transportation application. Solar and wind otoh, are at ~12+:1 delivered to the consumer as electricity, and in transportation applications would be at ~60-80% efficiency. Jeez, four times the energy returned compared to the energy invested, and two to three times the available energy for doing useful work for the consumer. That's an order of magnitude more energy available from renewables compared to oil. I bet that's why I can buy a solar panel setup that'll pay itself off, both in terms of money and energy, many times over during it's useful lifetime, but all I can do with FFs is continue to pay those poor poor billionaires.

[yesplease]

Waking up an old thread that is always relevant.
There´s a very interesting discussion about EROEI going on in THE OIL DRUM

I love how they're comparing the EROEI of old oil fields to the EROEI of energy delivered by renewables and nukes. Like Devil said, partiality...

The only way to come up with a wonderously high EROEI of oil, even in the past, is to ignore both transportation and refining of it before use. Unfortunately, if the creator of that image did that, oil would be at most around ~6:1, probably less. This ignores of course that electricity has much greater exergy than chemical energy, so if we look at the amount of energy that does useful/intended work, it looks even worse for oil.