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The MoA Week In Review – Open Thread 2020-09
Last week's posts at Moon of Alabama:
> “Both overall enemy-initiated attacks and effective enemy-initiated attacks during the fourth quarter of 2019 exceeded same-period levels in every year since recording began in 2010,” the report said. <
Other issues:
Libruls:
How the US empire stole the left's ideas – Joseph Massad /MEE
> [T]alk of the “agency” of the oppressed began to be deployed in defence of those who espouse imperial and racist ideas against their own people – and whom the US chooses as spokespeople for them. <
Speaking power to truth – The Critic
Patrick Porter reviews The Education of an Idealist by Samantha Power
> Even by the genre’s standards, the author is boringly self-obsessed. Mundane everyday life over-intrudes. She even commends herself for reproaching herself for her self-absorption. “I would catch myself feeling satisfied by a powerful speech I had made at the UN, or a compelling argument I had put before the President. I would then excoriate myself for measuring the wrong thing. “It’s not inputs that matter,” I would hear in my head. “It’s outcomes.”’ Aren’t you glad you didn’t write this? <
Assange:
Special Rapporteur on Torture, Nils Melzer on the case of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange
"A murderous system is being created before our very eyes" – Republik.ch
Russiagate:
Rosie memos @almostjingo – 1:40 UTC · Jan 30, 2020
Well geez this is awkward. Despite being told for years that "Internet Research Agency" was working for Putin the DOJ admits it's not going to offer any evidence in the case "that the Russian Government sponsored the alleged conspiracy" MUH RUSSIA. @TheJusticeDept
bigger
Fun:
Creating traffic jams in Google Maps by pulling a cart with 99 second hand smartphones – Simon Weckert
Use as open thread …
@Krollchem #67
Your questions
(1) There is a strong trend toward longer horizontal runs (lines) and more lines per borehole. The adding more lines from a single central borehole would appear to reduce the drilling costs per hole. Do you have any links relating this change in terms of cost per horizontal runs?
The Rose article doesn’t address the lines per hole – what they note is that more drilling is occurring without having to put down a brand new pad constantly. In particular, that the drilling can occur with a few feet displacement. This seems to imply the horizontal drilling you refer to, but I don’t honestly know. It isn’t clear to me that the detail matters in this case since it is cost per well we’re looking at.
(2) Given the child/parent issues that occur with closer horizontal runs, doesn’t this increase the costs of condensate recovery thus offsetting any economies from improved drilling operations?
I think an expert would have to speak to this; however, the way fracking operates makes me think that parent/child is less of an issue – because the fracking itself is creating its own “catch basins”. It seems logical that parent/child would be a problem for standard oil recovery where either the substrate is highly porous or there is a contiguous body of oil – but that’s exactly not the situation with fracking.
(3) Given that the industry is weeding out the smaller operators and know where the sweet spots are, wouldn’t this lead to a long term decline of the fracking industry between now and 2050?
It is possible, but the assumption under the scenario you stipulate is that there aren’t either operational efficiency, technology, demand or management differences. Or in other words, one operator is the same as another. There aren’t many real world examples of this in any other industry – why would fracking be different?
I’ve also noted many times – in other posts – that too many operators drives up costs for everyone in the business due to competition for fracking materials, leases, drilling rigs, people, etc – so a decline in fracking activity for whatever reason means costs fall for the remaining operators.
Lastly, the energy industry in general is historically boom/bust. The frackers are going through Hunger Games now. In whatever manner the thinning occurs, at some point there will be a reduction in capacity and/or enough time passes such that world demand grows faster than production increases – at which point the price will start shooting up and the cycle starts again.
(4) Given that the price of energy (work) that the public can afford provides an upper bound to the price of oil, wouldn’t this severely effect the ultimate recoverable condensate yield despite what the EIA models predict
This is a thinly disguised EROEI argument; historically, EROEI doesn’t mean squat. Either the extraction generates a needed commodity or the commodity isn’t needed enough; all EROEI translates into is higher $ value lower bound for product price. If a commodity has a replacement – the EROEI impact on price might accelerate/induce the replacement but that isn’t a problem for oil and natural gas in general at this time or for the forseeable future.
The “EROEI doesn’t matter” pattern has repeated many times – from Dutch peat to whale oil to tall trees for shipbuilding, etc:
Dutch were doing underwater peat extraction at the latter stages of the peat cycle and only stopped when the British showed coal was more abundant and cheap.
Whalers wound up taking literally multi-year voyages to the Pacific to catch whales, until oil came along.
The components for bronze were thousand plus mile trade routes until the Iron age came.
You can see in these 3 examples that EROEI was not relevant; the underlying product demand was such that people would go to enormous lengths/create new tech in order to meet the demand. It was only when a cheaper, abundant replacement came along that the “high EROEI” commodity stopped being produced – not the economics of the original product itself.
Posted by: c1ue | Feb 3 2020 5:27 utc | 100
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