the cost of a btu

[Doug]

When everything is shipped with dyno fuel or made with, grown with ect ect ect, the price of oio riples threw and you pay more....

Subtract the dyno oil from the equation and how much does a sail boat full of palm oil cost  even if sail boat fuel is free?

Doug

[hotater]

Subtract the dyno oil from the equation and how much does a sail boat full of palm oil cost   even if sail boat fuel is free?

It cost the same or more, otherwise there would be a company doing it.

My patent attorney once said, "Design a mouse trap to SELL.  Dead mice aren't worth anything."

[Doug]

Now thats a clever saying Jack!

But oil prices have a direct effect on the cost of moving or making anything even Bio derived fuel.
Unless you are buying localy grown veg oil from and organic farmer that uses horses. Changes in petroleum prices will change the cost of your bio oil.

I'd like to know what it would cost to build my own wood methanol plant.
I wonder if that is now cost effective if I of course I can get a lot of cheap scrap wood to char.

We don't factor in the welfare we pay the oil companies to produce petroleum because our income tax statements don't state how much of that goes to tax brakes, and hand outs....

Oil actualy costs more than we see at the pump

[hotater]

  Oil is the fuel of the engine of freedom.  What is it worth to NOT have to feed an ox or mule to plow your five acres of corn?   Oil has allowed modern man to EAT the ox, ride the mule and farm 600 acres.  Oil is cheap at twice the price.

There is NO problem with oil--There's PLENTY of it.  It's VERY easy to get to.  It's amazingly cheap to transport, refine, store, and use.  It's going to be the fuel of choice for many, many, decades to come.  Get used to it and DEAL WITH IT.

Reality is unhandly sometimes, but it sure is DURABLE!

About 1963 when Standard Oil was still a force but was 'carrying baggage' in the market place, my dad said, "We ain't going back to burning stove wood;  I just bought stock in Texaco."  He later bought Exon just after the  Valdez spill.  He said, "A wreck doesn't kill the demand, it increases it."

My dad also tripled his money in Enron, but sold out when the figures didn't makes sense to him anymore.

Somehow the financial part of of his genes missed me, but I have the same perspective of the actual realities of the marketplace.

When heating oil spikes way up in the Rust Belt during a month of blizzards you should smile because you were gutsy enough to bet green dollars on an uncertain future.......and WON.   That way you don't have any trouble paying the increased bill to keep warm.

You have to paddle hard to ride a free wave.   

[Doug]

All very good points Jack, suply and demand drive market forces and right now demand is squeezing suply and I don;t expect too see that change anytime soon.

There is plenty of oil and we aren't going to run out in my lifetime or my son's, but I think we are going to have to get used to paying a lot more for it unless we learn how to use much less and find alternative sources of energy that aren't just repackaged oil ( like a solar cell that requires more oil to make than equiv energy it can produce in its life time ) .

I wish I bought stock in BreX and sold before it became obvious there never was any gold in the jungle. You old man must be smart fellow!!!

[biobill]

like a solar cell that requires more oil to make than equiv energy it can produce in its life time

  Doug,
Have you got a source for that statement? Maybe you're right, I know they're energy intensive to manufacture but still figured them to be positive in the long haul.    Bill
               

[Holter]

alternative sources of energy that aren't just repackaged oil ( like a solar cell that requires more oil to make than equiv energy it can produce in its life time ) .

Tthe energy payback time of a PV system, of course depends on irradiation, module technology and efficiency of the production plant, but it is already between 1.5 (thin film Modules in Places with 1500kWh/kWp/y) and four years. The article about Photovoltaics in Wikipedia.org has an interesting column about this.

Christian
(installing grid-connected PV systems in Germany)

[rbodell]

All very good points Jack, suply and demand drive market forces and right now demand is squeezing suply and I don;t expect too see that change anytime soon.

There is plenty of oil and we aren't going to run out in my lifetime or my son's, but I think we are going to have to get used to paying a lot more for it unless we learn how to use much less and find alternative sources of energy that aren't just repackaged oil ( like a solar cell that requires more oil to make than equiv energy it can produce in its life time ) .

I wish I bought stock in BreX and sold before it became obvious there never was any gold in the jungle. You old man must be smart fellow!!!

You have been seriously mislead. Do you subscribe to conspiracytheory.com LOL. You need to come to town once and a while, The world has advanced a lot in the last 15 years LOL.

If it takes more energy to produce them than the energy that they can produce, how is it that a company can pay for the energy used to produce them +payroll,+shipping, plus etc etc etc and make a profit and still sell them whole sale at a price where the public can buy them retail and pay for them in about 5 years when they are expected to have a life expectancy of 20 years? If I invest in a business that shows a payoff of 5 years, that is considered a good investment. With solar cells I don't have to worry about wages going up, law suits, mismanagement, the factory burning down etc like a regular business would, so how is that not a good investment? Not only have I paid for the cost of production, profits and wages for all the companies between me and the manufacturer, but I get another 15 years of free energy.
We have not even considered that oil used to produce the power you would not have used during the additional 15 years of free power after the cells are paid for?
Granted, at this moment oil may be the cheapest /kwh but those days are soon to end.
That was back in the 90's, Current prices are around $4 a watt now with an expected payoff of approximately 5 years, are you saying you will never get $4 out of a solar cell that lasts 20 years?
http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/biztech/10/02/solar.cells.reut/index.html
In the same article aoout STMicroelectronics , it says the technology is here to produce them at 2 cents per watt and would be a serious competitor to oil and could be in production in about a year.

This is about nanotechnology and solar cells.
http://www.technologynewsdaily.com/node/3575

Myself personally, I have solar as a backup to my lister. I have solar because I could install it and forget about it. When I need it, it is there. Maintenance consists of hoseing it off a couple of times a year if it doesn't rain for a while. I could care less if it will ever pay for itself. When I lived on a sailboat without an engine, I had solar because I didn't want to listen to a generator all day. My lister paying for itself is a pipe dream at best, Without a lot of expensive test and metering equipment, I probably pay two to three times what the grid costs. I am going to die soon enough I can honestly say what I do will not make a difference in the world so ecology is not any importance to me. The ecologists are glad they have a place to dump their used oil for a dollar a gallon. I run my lister out of revenge on the power company alone. They pissed me off and now they don't get any of my money.

[Doug]

like a solar cell that requires more oil to make than equiv energy it can produce in its life time

  Doug,
Have you got a source for that statement? Maybe you're right, I know they're energy intensive to manufacture but still figured them to be positive in the long haul.    Bill
               

No I can't.....
Its something I read a long time ago that stuck in my head.
Technology advances judging from some of ther replies I have read I am way out of date on my costs and probably wrong in 2007 ( maybe this was right in 1987 )

[rcavictim]

Some day we may regrete we weren't a little more frugal with what we sold and what we payed to use it ourselves.
Someday we may regrete the damage we did exploiting those resources.
Someday we may a teriable price for letting other goverments dictate our domestic policies or lack there of.

For now let the good times roll, there are still plenty of stopes to rape, wells to suck and trees to cut.

That is a pretty good description of Alberta today.  This short CBC documentary is a must see!

http://www.cbc.ca/mrl3/23745/thenational/archive/albertasands1-121207.wmv

[Doug]

This short CBC documentary is a must see!

Thanks but I'm already living the dream ( Greasy portugeus speaking SOBs )

[Firebrick]

The main reason that diesel in the winter goes up is not because of the changeover in refineries(plays a small part) but because of pure and plain science.  When they refine oil the is so much propane, so much gasoline, so much kerosene, so much diesel, so much bunker oil, and so much asphalt that comes out per gallon of crude.  The companies can change the ratios slightly but not by much.  When Caterpillar brought out there diesel engine tractors in the 1930's they didn't sell it for the fuel economy in their sales brochures.  They sold it cause diesel was dirt cheap.  Because gasoline was the standard fuel, diesel was a byproduct, very few used it.  Same with kerosene.  As trucks, trains, boats,jets,and home heat has switched over to these cheap fuels, then it became more than a byproduct into a main product.  Propane exploded in popularity in the 50's because again, it was a waste product that most refineries just flared off but it's popularity have brought it to a main product status.  As has natural gas that is extracted in the oil wells, landfills, and coal mines. 

In the winter with heating needs rising, transportation and heating compete for a finite supply(refinery capacity, which hasn't grown in this country in years because of environmental laws make it near impossible to do so.)  Diesel is not that much more efficient than gas engines when you measure pounds of fuel burned per hp.(All oil base fuel have very close btu's per pound measurements.  The constellation engines exceeded the fuel efficiency  of many diesels in their day and is close to many modern diesels.  Large ground transportation (class 4-8 trucks and large equipment)  gas engines did not receive any research and development and I am convinced that with turbos,turbo compounding,  multiple spark plugs, modern fuel injection/computer ignition, overhead valves, that these large engines would have reaped the same lbs per hp that their diesel counterparts and light vehicle (gas and diesel) engines get. 

Everyone is so engrossed with MPG that they don't look at the true picture of MPD miles per dollar or miles per Btu.  Do the math, whether comparing a 3/4 ton gas and diesel pickups, or a efficient gas car to a diesel or hybrid counterpart, the gas engine will cost less in the total lifespan and in btu's, and that is comparing diesel when it was 10 cents cheaper than gas, not more expensive like it is now.  (If you can regularly use waste oil then this doesn't compare,at least in MPD, but most can't)