Runnin’ on Empty February

Our Sweetheart Deal

“You know you don’t have to act with me, Steve. You don’t have to say anything and you don’t have to do anything. Not a thing. Oh, maybe just whistle. You know how to whistle, don’t you, Steve? You just put your lips together and blow.”

--To Have and Have Not, Warner Bros. 1944

Bogie and Becall’s famous romance – both onscreen and off – had nothing over the United States’ passion for hydrocarbons. Hydrocarbons are molecules containing only carbon (C) atoms combined with varying numbers of hydrogen (H) atoms. The thousands of possible varieties of hydrocarbon molecules and compounds result in multiple products, such as “sweet” and “sour” crude oil, propane (C2H8), butane (C4H10), and methane (CH4—the primary component of LNG¹). The variety of products leads to a variety of uses.² And, that variety of uses has led to our dependence.

"Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale

Her infinite variety. Other women cloy

The appetites they feed, but she makes me hungry

Where most she satisfies."

--Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra

Infinite variety—from the internal combustion engine to the plastic keyboard on which I write to the glasses or contacts you may be using to read the petroleum-based ink on this page which was manufactured with petroleum, from a tree cut down with a chain saw powered by petroleum and transported with petroleum to a mill run with machines…

Sorry, it’s hard to stop. Hydrocarbons’ adaptability -- in particular, petroleum’s -- is not the sole reason for our addictive dependence. “[W]hat has made oil such a valuable energy commodity” is that it’s “easily transported…energy-dense (gasoline contains roughly 40 kilowatt-hours per gallon), [and] capable of being refined into several fuels, including gasoline, kerosene and diesel.”³ Petroleum’s appeal comes not just from its variety but from its potency.

Fuels are defined as “materials that store energy”⁴ and petroleum is a fuel without equal. We measure fuel energy efficiency by a ratio called EROEI, or “Energy Return On Energy Invested.” Bang for the buck. When we first drilled oil out of the ground, its EROEI was 100. To compare, coal is 9 and nuclear is 4.⁵ This was the sweetheart deal that clinched our romance with hydrocarbons! Not since humans first used fire has our species discovered such potent assistance in furthering our ambitions.

FIRST COMES LOVE, THEN COMES MARRIAGE…

Cheap energy! What could be better? We fell head over heels, became “the world’s largest energy producer, consumer, and net importer” and the world’s largest economy and “the world’s largest single source of anthropogenic (human-caused) greenhouse gas emissions.”⁶ “The U.S.--the most populous of today's developed countries-- has also one of the highest population growth rates of the industrialized nations.” Only one-third of this growth comes from immigration.⁷ Our total population, however, amounts to less than 5% of world population, yet our five percent consume one-quarter of the world’s energy and produce one-quarter of its carbon emissions.⁸ Put another way, every American baby born will consume and pollute in a lifetime as much as five babies born in developing countries.

That statistic is important because the rest of the world is copying us. Like China, with the world’s second largest energy consumption⁹ and rapidly growing pollution. Everyone wants our lifestyle. You know – fast-paced, shopping-crazed, two-jobs, no-time-to-smell-the-roses (Didn’t see them), gotta-go, so-busy-these-days stress? “In fact, the entire economy in every industrial nation was completely dependent on the continuing availability of energy resources at low and stable prices”¹⁰ by the year 2000.

Okay. Let’s move on. This is an “up” column and our love affair with oil obviously has a “downer” side. Above, I wrote, “When oil was first drilled out of the ground, its EROEI was 100.” Do EROEIs change? Yes, they do. Can they go up? Not often. Could our love affair experience a mid-life crisis? Definitely. Heinberg ¹¹explains: By the 1970s, oil and gas EROEI (aka “Energy Profit Ratio”) had dropped to 23 for production of existing sources and a mere 8 for newly discovered sources. Why? “It takes energy to acquire or develop energy resources. A potential source that contains more energy than was expended in theeffort to acquire it yields an energy profit.”¹² Similarly, “when the energy equivalent of a barrel of oil must be invested in order to obtain a barrel of oil – the exercise will become almost pointless.”¹³ As of 2003, the oil we import (60% of our total) was estimated between 8 and 11 EROEI. ¹⁴

In my first column I used the metaphor of drinking a soda, in a glass, with ice, through a straw to point out that when one reaches the bottom of the glass there comes a point when it’s no longer worth trying to suck out what little soda remains. I also explained we’ve already drunk half the glass. So, it looks like our sweetheart deal is in its second half. What a love affair it’s been! Next month is the equinox, a good time to write about midpoints and where we go from here. See you then!

Caren Black

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REFERENCES:

¹ en.wikipedia.org

² Chris Kaiser, Process Engineer, Anvil Corporation

³ Richard Heinberg, The Party’s Over, New Society, Gabriola Island, BC, 2003, p.124

⁴ ibid, p.12

⁵ ibid, p.152-3

⁶ United States Country Analysis Brief, www.eia.doe.gov, p.1, 19

⁷ www.gcrio.org

⁸ D.O.E., op cit, p. 22

⁹ Carbon Sequestration leadership Forum, www.cslforum.org