I like your description of oil as “free”. That’s half the problem, and half the solution. Because oil has been virtually free we have used it like there’s no tomorrow. Half the solution to coping without “free” oil is summed up in the adage “waste not want not”.

The other half of the solution is to go back to a very basic fact then think forward from that. One of the most basic facts about crude oil is that it is a useless product until it is cooked. Once it has been cooked the vapours can be condensed at various temperatures to create various useful products which can be used in various ways. It follows logically that the replacement for oil wont be a single this or that.

The replacements for heating oil already include electricity and geothermal and solar energy.

The replacements for petrol already include diesel and public transport. Diesel only because the greater fuel efficiency of diesel engines extends the life of oil resources till a more permanent alternative can be productionised.

Algae fuels seem to be targetting the jet engine, possibly because the necessary volumes of fuel are smaller than for internal combustion engines.

To drag out another old adage - horses for courses.

It was the mindset that I was attempting to draw attention to, not the actual problem of the day that elicited the comment about gasoline or oats. Trying to revert to horsedrawn transport would create even more of a biofuels crises precisely because of that 40x growth.

Perhaps I should have provided this link to clarify -
http://www.all-creatures.org/nyca/ch-hist-19711000.html

Your last comment is certainly true for the governments earning the royalties and the companies paying those royalties. But most investors are simply gambling on the future price being higher than the current price. Investors need the price to keep rising to make a profit. At $40 barrel it would be raining investors on Wall St. Algae seems to be the only viable alternative for jet fuel at the moment. I’m not sure what alternatives are are being considered for plastics and fertilisers.

A century ago a similar debate was raging.

A strawman’s argument and you know it. Why ?
Over the last 100 years we’ve had 4x population, 40x economic growth. We can’t go back, but if we go forward we hit the progress trap.

Algae, show me the oil ? All the figures I’ve seen to date show it being useful but it won’t scale to replace what we get for “free” at the moment.

I’d put my money on algae if I was an investor

At the moment all the smart money is actually on oil as there’s many years of super profits to be made at anything over $40 per barrel.

Trevor.

I’d put my money on algae if I was an investor.

Two words:
- scalability
- yield

Mouldy, first sensible thing based on ereal evidence I can recall you ever saying on this blog. Keep it up!

That’s entirely incorrect. Biofuels have had such an impact purely and simply because of the subsidies thrown at them by politicians. No subsidies, no biofuel humanitarian disaster.

Joy,

- “As a people, a nation, we need to be mindful of the basics, for our own communities and endeavour to help promote healthy global policies.”

The problem is that biofuels was touted as just the sort of initiative you describe.

Quote of the Week…a letter from the Oil & Gas Journal, Feb 4th, 2008
World Decline Rate:
“The January 17th 2008 press release by Cambridge Energy Research Associates…reported the world’s oil supplies were to rise to 112 million b/d by 2017. This rise is in spite of CERA’s other conclusion that the world’s oil fields are declining in capacity at the average rate of 4.5%/year. These conclusions are clearly suspect.”
“Although it is unlikely that global oil production is likely to drop significantly in the next few years, major sustainable increases are equally unlikely. Given the current global production of 86 million b/d and CERA’s 4.5% decline, global capacity would have to increase by 7.5 million b/d each year for the next 10 years to reach 112 million b/d. This is a total of 75 million b/d of new capacity in 10 years. Even excluding the effect of declining rates, achieving 112 million b/d within a decade represents a massive leap of 26 million b/d in global capacity.”
“To put this in perspective, 75 million b/d of new capacity is the equivalent of eight new Saudi Arabias or 14 new Irans in just 10 years. Considering the reality that Saudi Arabia, with 25% of the world’s best proven reserves, is already investing $50 billion to increase its production capacity by 2 million b/d, where does CERA expect the additional 24 million b/d of production capacity to come from, let alone the replacement for the 51 million b/d of declines?�
Dr. Moujahed Al-Husseini, GeoArabia; Manama, Bahrain
Dr. Sadad Al-Husseini, Saudi Aramco (retired); Dharan

If it wasn’t so serious it would be hilarious. Are there clowns asleep at the wheel, or is there some ulterior motive behind the reckless disregard ?.