Saudi Arabia oil exports will dip for a few days because of the damage to oil handling infrastructure. Saudi Arabia oil exports were 7,371.537 Barrel/Day in Dec 2018 and 6,968.319 Barrel/Day in Dec 2017.
US oil export statistics for the past six weeks.
SOURCES – EIA
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Some off the shelf fixed winged drones can range 50-150miles.
I’m surprised no one has yet sent a bunch of them over the border loaded up with some neutral net trained up with a few subjective millennia of game play on “Lock On: Modern Air Combat”.
Fermi paradox solution?
Real world pickup MPG:
Honda Ridgeline 19.16
Ram 17.7
Ford F150 16.58
GMC Sierra 1500 16.3
Chevy Silverado 1500 16.28
Toyota Tundra 14.2
Nissan Titan 13.92
These are averages of a few years.
The diesel models get a bit better, but there is more energy in diesel, and you could have made more gasoline with the same amount of crude that went into making the diesel. Diesel is also worse for health and the environment.
I have often thought how terrible it is that the tractors in the fields even on organic farms are spewing all that diesel exhaust all over the crops. And it would be so easy to have solar systems charge electric tractors. They have plenty of space, nice flat roofs, and those electric motors would last for a very long time. Lots of torque as well. But I am off topic.
Sorry, Willys Jeeps are not even close to fuel efficient: http://www.fuelly.com/car/jeep/willys
Suzuki Samurais were better, about 21 mpg, real world. But that is still crap, in my opinion.
The closest they have come to what I am talking about in design would be a dune buggy. Though I would still want windows/doors, 4 roomy comfortable seats and some storage (so a bit bigger), and some good engineering for efficiency.
How would they know if no one would want them. If they won’t make a light, strong, roomy, durable, efficient vehicle, if they never made one? I would certainly give up hauling trailers and heavy loads in the back and such for such a thing.
Hauling trailers really is not that fun. And most people don’t need to haul heavy stuff in a bed either except once in a blue moon.
90+% of the pickups I see on the highway have nothing in the bed. Most of the other 10% would do better to have a van.
Banning “body on frame” design for new cars, SUVs and pickups would be a big help in the efficiency department. It just adds too much weight and drag. But, I think that is unnecessary if you just required 30 mpg real world, as they would likely to be forced to abandon that anyway. The newer Honda Ridgelines get about 20.5 mpg real world. But that is still quite short of 30 mpg. And I respect the skill of Honda engineers. That is why I would just like to see all the new pickups run on natural gas instead. A bit of engine redesign and tanks, rather than billions & billions.
Suppose ‘government’ made available big pickup trucks to rent at actual cost, and all anyone needs to provide is evidence that they need it for a personal ‘heavy load’ trip of any kind – pulling a camping trailer or boat, hauling gravel for your drive, anything. They’ll even drop it off at your house or wherever you need it, and pick it up after.
Do you really think the number of pickups owned would drop substantially? I doubt it.
I suppose some would have to give them up when their spouses point out that their ‘reasons’ for owning a big and expensive pickup no longer hold water.
There have been small, lightweight, relatively fuel efficient vehicles as capable off road as a pickup truck (if not more so) for a long, long time. Since at least the 1941 Willys Jeep.
But people don’t JUST want off road capability (and sometimes that isn’t a big factor at all). They also want
Pave every road and driveway in the country and you’ll still have lots of people getting around in big 4wd wagons and pickups.
After all, the cities of China are filled with the things, and most of those vehicles have never seen a dirt road ever.
Racing cars can and regularly do have high speed crashes, roll-overs, etc. And I mean much higher speeds than (most) people do on public roads. The drivers get out, get checked for concussion, and then get in their spare car and keep racing.
How? Because the vehicles are designed for safety. They have steel roll cages. They have proper safety belts not just a 1960 tech 3-point that these days you can’t even do up nice and tight because it’s on a (low tension) spring retractor. They don’t have glass sitting next to your face. The strong, rigid seats have structures to control the movement of your head and neck in a crash. (HANS) And you are in a helmet.
Racing cars are proof that modern road vehicles could be much, much safer than they are. But I guess the authorities would rather do something that sounds effective than something that IS effective.
eg. you have to have a red light that tells people to put a seatbelt on, even if it’s not connected to any sensor and so just comes on for 30 seconds every time you start the car. No kidding, I remember a car that went from a 3 star safety rating to a 4 star safety rating because they put in such a stupid light.
The USA oil demand exceeds the USA oil production. And that is the only thing that is important. And there is no good reason for it since conservation and substitution of natural gas for oil would reduce oil consumption to the point where we produce more oil than we use. In fact natural gas is so much cheaper than oil I can’t figure why we are still burning oil for non-transportation uses.
https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/use-of-energy/transportation-in-depth.php
Scroll down to the bottom.
We need to use light strong metals to make cars that are both more efficient and stronger. Safety standards are crap. No one has done the math apparently. Road injuries and deaths are very costly. The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety is only concerned about accidents up to 40 mph. It is not even government. There is no government vehicle safety testing. It should be paramount to make vehicles that can withstand the highest speeds where there is oncoming traffic and no barrier. That means both that we need more barriers/separated directions with a significant gap, and higher strength vehicles. And what I mean by “withstand” is no fatalities, and no permanent disability. That is really where the math has not been done. No one has added up the cost of permanent disabilities, and the cost of now financially supporting families that have lost a member or more in an automobile accident. I did it once. It was staggering. $200 billion is spent on the disabled. About a third of that is from auto accidents. $66 billion/year. The wholes Interstate Highway System costed $128.9 billion https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/interstate/faq.cfm#question6
That’s right. What we pay for 2 years of injuries from the system could build the whole thing. Doesn’t that make it clear that investing to make the system (and vehicles) safer would save a ton of cash?
I never said we should attack anyone.
You only need more refinery capacity if you are refining. If you are just exporting more crude, it does not mater. Let the market decide how it wants to export exactly. The main things are to get production way up and consumption down. I think we can get consumption down by a third…without loosing anything.
55 million or so pickup trucks use 31% of fuel. There are well over 3 times as many cars+motorcycles and collectively they use 24%. We might have to ban using full size pickups as commuter vehicles unless they are natural gas. We have huge quantities of natural gas. Even so, we need to scrap all the simple cycle natural gas power plants and have high efficiency standards on all new natural gas power plants. Maybe 58% minimum. The record is 62%+, so they would have a little wiggle room. But those simple cycle ones are crap. They are typically about 38% efficient.
If we are going to get the trucks off the streets, we also have to pave more roads, and help people pave their own long driveways in rural areas and/or get the automakers to design alternatives to pickups that can handle dirt roads well, and are lean on fuel.
Really, I want to see us build a hundred nuclear power plants and make millions of tons of titanium, concrete, borosilicate glass, steel, magnesium and aluminum. And use concrete made with that power to pave lots of roads, widen highways and stop using asphalt. Thick reinforced concrete roads.
Apparently missiles, now
That actually is doable, but why attack opec countries when we can get the suni and shia to do it to each other. What we need to do is start building domestically manufacturered modular skid mounted oil refineries (they can be built as large as 500,000 bbl/day in production and do a guns for oil deal with the saudi and allow them to arm and hire u.s. military contractors to solve their problem (think flying tigers) and refine their crude in our coastal refineries for export. The Chicago refineries can feed the north east for 3 seasons of the year. It would drive a lot of global refinery capability out of productionand improve the environment glpbally while raking in the money for the u.s.
Those modular skid refineries can be turned out quickly compared to building traditional refineries.
US production has risen pretty steadily since 2012. The law allowing exports for the first time in decades was signed by Obama in 2015. Trump’s regulation and tax cuts probably helped out but this is a long term trend unrelated to Trump.
It’s all effectively fungible though. The more oil the US produces while holding consumption steady or falling, the more oil is available on the world market.
Still net importing. To me that is not exporting, just a bit of shuffling. 2 net exporting weeks this year. But three weeks in a row of less than a million barrels a day is certainly something to be happy about. Though the value of what we export in petroleum products might be a little higher than what we import, as we are exporting a lot of finished products. https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=WTTNTUS2&f=W
I would like to see us net exporting 9-10 million barrels a day. And I think that can be done. We need to get pickups running on natural gas. Put the military on a diet. Build more freeway lanes, bridges and tunnels. Require all new tires for road use to be low rolling resistance. Shave all the un-smooth concrete highways. Stop Mexican semis from coming in. Get freight moved primarily by rail and off the highways unless it is only going a few hundred miles. And well, there are a hundred other ways to reduce fuel waste…without getting less done.
And obviously we would have to pump more as well.
US Exports exceed Saudi exports because are imports exceed Saudi exports.
We import heavy oil and use our sophisticated refining techniques to create product for use and export. Our light/sweet fracked oil is mostly exported because the refining required is much simpler.
Our net imports (imports – exports) are roughly 1 Mil BBL / Day. In dollars, its probably a wash as our exports are worth more than our imports.
it seems Trumps energy policy is working.. once we decouple our economy even further from China we will be a truly independent nation and can tell the rest of the world to get lost
Kind of hard to believe that America exceeds Saudi. I suppose a lot of this has been achieved through technology. Some reports say that within a few years the USA will exceed the combined output of both Saudi Arabia and Russia.
Enemy drones caused the damage. Does anyone have any info on these drones, size, capacity etc. Were they armed with explosives that detonated on drone impact or were their missle shot from drones. Or bombs dropped from drones, etc.