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Oil Wells Done Rube-Goldberg Style: Flatrods And Jerk Lines:
The news is full of the record low oil price due to the COVID-19-related drop in demand. The benchmark Brent crude dipped below $20 a barrel, while West Texas intermediate entered negative pricing. We've all become oil market watchers overnight, and for some of us that's led down a rabbit hole of browsing to learn a bit about how oil is extracted.
Many of us will have seen offshore oil platforms or nodding pumpjacks, but how many of us outside the industry have much more than a very superficial knowledge of it? Of all the various technologies to provide enlightenment of the curious technologist there's one curious survivor from the earliest days of the industry that is definitely worth investigation, the jerk line oil well pump. This is a means of powering a reciprocating pump in an oil well not through an individual engine or motor as in the pump jacks, but in a system of rods transmitting power over long distances from a central location by means of reciprocating motion. It's gloriously simple, which has probably contributed to its survival in a few small-scale oil fields over a century and a half after its invention.
(Score: 2) by Aegis on Tuesday May 05 2020, @02:27PM (8 children)
I wonder if that has something to do with the fact that oils gets the vast majority of them?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday May 05 2020, @02:48PM (7 children)
But the study does list over $14 billion in subsidies which are specifically not for fossil fuel. That rules out "vast majority". I haven't even touched on subsidy per unit of energy, which heavily swings towards renewables like wind and solar.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by HiThere on Tuesday May 05 2020, @03:33PM (3 children)
Does the study count US military expenditures in the middle east? If not, it's almost irrelevant.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday May 05 2020, @04:01PM (2 children)
Sure, they just don't count as subsidies for fossil fuels. And if we're going to do that, we should count similar military expenditures for the supply chains for these others too anywhere in the world (since after all, most Middle East oil doesn't actually go to the US). I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader what happens to everyone's subsidies when one includes petroleum based transportation which is part of any global supply chain.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Tuesday May 05 2020, @10:48PM (1 child)
A definite point. And the use of petrochemicals is a lot larger than just producing energy for home and industrial purposes. Electricity is much less so. But you still need to count all the subsidies if you're going to make a valid comparison rather than just a political statement.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday May 06 2020, @01:06AM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 05 2020, @09:49PM (2 children)
No it doesn't. That table on page 9 lists 42% as end-use and 7% as conservation. If I use a subsidy to improve the insulation in my home, it's from an energy-specific subsidy, and it's not tied to any means of production at all.
The ONLY subsidies that matter to this train of thought is those which are production subsidies. Not R&D, not efficiency, but production.
And that figure, too, is misleading: direct expenditures for a nascent industry will be higher than for an established one, and that table has only three years' data, it doesn't have historic investments.
By example with fabricated figures: if the USA poured, eg., 1T into direct expenditures in oil in the 90s and then 0 after, and then renewables get 1T in the aughts, that doesn't make renewables a larger receiver of taxes.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday May 06 2020, @01:08AM (1 child)
What would be the point of including historic investments? Those are sunk costs. They have no relevance to today's subsidies or the effects of cutting them.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 08 2020, @07:40PM
What? No. Cull the weak. The weak are oil. Having fed the old dog for years until it cannot serve, do you starve the new pup? No, you feed it dogmeat once it can serve.
Those figures don't account for oil spill costs or damages in any way either. Typical US mentality, ignoring cost over time and externalities, and acting like one datum means more than it does. Did you know, for example, that in the Dakotas there are a ton of small oil-serving companies which are veteran, visible minority, or woman owned, in roughly that rate order, and which get a tonne of grants which don't show up on this, but instead show up as social programmes? As if supporting disabled vet-owned enterprises isn't a mil cost at heart.
Anyways, you keep thinking your way, our generations will die soon enough, future generations are tired of your bullshit and either autocratic leadership will force whatever they happen to choose upon the humans, or saner policies will be adopted by free (in body /and/ mind, mind you) societies. I don't understand why you lean to the former, but the grave won't care.