[vredesbyrd]

Originally Posted by ads11

I rambled as usual so I'll use subheaders to break down the two distinct discussions I make below.

Alternate fuels: Biofuels

But you get what I mean right?

Thank you for taking your time out and explaining it to me in an elaborate way. Yes, I get what you mean and I see the problem with biofuels now. I hope that as you said, transition not only carries forward the method of energy generation but the contributors as well.

However, the forceful introduction of EVs are like a hammer to my dreams of 3L+ engines and lots of cylinders. I try to be responsible in every way possible in my daily life (the classic three R's) and reduce wastage. However, I cannot give up on ICE. It is what gives me joy.

The ignorant rule by NGT just adds fuel to the fire. I hope you understand what I am rambling about :3

[ads11]

Originally Posted by vredesbyrd

However, the forceful introduction of EVs are like a hammer to my dreams of 3L+ engines and lots of cylinders. I try to be responsible in every way possible in my daily life (the classic three R's) and reduce wastage. However, I cannot give up on ICE. It is what gives me joy.

I get what you mean. I've grown up my entire life an avowed petrolhead but it seems I've missed the boat when it comes to eventually owning the kind of cars I dreamed about always. Oh well, I imagine there'll be limited scenarios where you could maybe still be allowed to sample an ICE still, say track days where you have to offset your carbon footprint for that duration as an example. I imagine I'd avail every once in a while. For now though, it looks unlikely there'll be many more new ICE vehicles developed. Gotta enjoy them while you still can.

[TrackDay]

The past, present and future of Oil & Oil Companies

I can truly say that I am thankful for Oil and the way it has changed our lives. It's discovery has impacted our species and others like no other natural resource ever has. It has changed livelihoods, led to newer industries hence new jobs, brought about new regional powers with it's discovery. Heck, even wars were created and fought for this ! The Discovery of oil reserves in the Middle East also benefited us Indians, as we are one of the largest expatriate communities over there. It has led to Jobs hence huge remittance from abroad back to Home.

The present is around us ,almost everywhere !(Click on the picture to view in a larger size)

The future is like what most have stated. From my limited understanding and knowledge, I believe that oil is still necessary as Planes, Ships and Huge machinery will still require them, unless a break through revolutionary invention comes about associated with turbines and big displacement engines.

Originally Posted by saikarthik

Please post good stats and links to documentaries if available.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vPGglk0cEJo

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/...nd-gas-sector/

Originally Posted by dragracer567

Let us Kuwait (where I lived for 7 years) as a case study since it's the most extreme example of Oil dependence in the Gulf (even more so than Saudi Arabia). Oil constitutes about 43% of the country's GDP and a much higher proportion to the state budget.
This came about because the Kuwaitis flat out refused to shift their economy away from oil unlike their neighbours who are trying. The fact that Kuwaitis are the most racist people in the Gulf (which is saying something) doesn't help either. The only significant consoling factor is their hefty sovereign wealth fund, so they aren't exactly a Venezuela.

I can relate to a lot of this since I grew up and also worked there for some time. It might be hard to believe this, but one of the richest nations in the World is tapping into it's wealth fund as cash had dried up ! It is believed the oil price, the current pandemic and lack of diversification led to this situation.

Sources:
https://gulfbusiness.com/one-of-worl...0to%20negative.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...gn-wealth-fund

[landcruiser123]

https://www.indiatimes.com/trending/...er-534029.html

The IIT Delhi team has successfully split water via a method known as the Sulphur-Iodine (SI) thermochemical hydrogen cycle, to manufacture low-cost, renewable hydrogen fuel for industrial consumption, as part of its research. Emissions can be mitigated by hydrogen gas, a viable option as a sustainable replacement for fossil fuels.


The design of an effective catalyst for the energy-intensive and corrosive step of sulphuric acid conversion to sulphur dioxide and oxygen, was one of the key challenges faced by the IIT Delhi researchers. The in-house catalyst follows these conditions and is now patented; the Institute is designing and demonstrating a method based on them.

Low-cost Hydrogen from processes like this can be a game changer in reducing the consumption of Hydrogen and Lithium.

[RJK]

Originally Posted by Zignor

Some pretty technically accurate points here. Since I work in the oilfield, more specifically on oil rigs, I will be optimistic about the need for oil and gas in the near future being continued.
It has already been discussed here at length about the alternate sources of fuel for vehicles and other energy sources for power related equipment.
One thing I'd like to add to it is that the oilfield employs a lot of personnel. It is estimated that close to 7 million people worldwide work directly in oil exploration and production whereas close to 10 times that work indirectly in companies dealing with oil related products. A huge quantity of labor is just lost once the world stops relying on oil.
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for making the environment a better place. We should be doing that in every small step possible. But the fact is, alternate sources of energy such as lithium or nuclear are yet in a nascent stage of development safety wise. In fact, one of our discussions at work dealt with how it was more hazardous mining lithium as compared to oil.
Kindly ignore my bias here but if I could summarize, should we really stop relying on oil for energy? Yes. Will we? I doubt.

Adding to what Zignor has said, Oil & gas indeed does employ a huge pool of people, including myself. The last year has been quite unforgiving, especially for the drilling contractors or the oil rig owners that I also work for. Jobs losses have been rampant and thoughtless. It’s really a toughest time to be in the industry given that I have seen only last 7yrs of it (essentially got in once the downturn began )

@maddy42 - Though ads has given correct explanation about the extraction of oil and deposits of HC’s the real reason, like any other business is purely commercial. The biggest energy & retail conglomerate in India has a lot to do with it. ONGC being a typical govt entity doesn’t help either as they are more than happy to waste tax payers money. The company men or Operators representatives (ONGC in this case) don’t step out of their accommodation on to the drill floor for most part and are very happy as long as they get their steady supply of dry fruits and great food in the mess room. Long story short - yes, oil and/or gas reserves not being developed is by design, much like any other PSU business

[himanshu_trikha]

Hello Folks !

This is my first post in the forum.

I have been in the Oil and Gas sector for around 1.5 Decades as of now with my primary responsibility as conceptualizing the Downstream complexes known as Refinery/Petrochemical Configuration Studies. In simple terms I help owners decide the Products to manufacture from Crude Oil while employing available technologies and also meeting prevalent environmental norms. My observations here will be from Downstream Crude Oil processing perspective.

There is a definite shift in manufacturing Chemicals from Crude Oil rather than Automotive fuel such as Gasoline or Diesel. The economics of production of Gasoline is getting really gruesome because the base material Naphtha also competes as Feed to manufacture petrochemicals. Diesel with end-usage as Long-Haul Transportation has still demand and a bit favorable economics as compared with Diesel. The same positivity is true for ATF if we ignore disruption in Covid era. Therefore, the complexes designed today are producing both Fuels and Petrochemicals at the same time. Some of the old complexes are also trying to add some petrochemicals to their portfolio.

Historically, Oil Refineries were placed close to demand centers wherein Oil would be imported and then refined to Fuels and supplied throughout close to demand centers. Importing Crude Oil made sense because of Profit these refiners made between price of Fuels and Crude Oil. Production of Chemicals can be game-changer because not only Crude Oil ,there are other Feed-stocks like Rich Gas ,Coal, Shale Oil &Gas and Condensates which are most cost-effective to manufacture chemicals rather than Crude Oil. The regions rich in these resources have really low cost of production and can supply worldwide unless artificially marred by duties and Taxes.Additionally, Companies like Saudi Aramco are investing heavily in developing technologies like Crude to Chemicals which may be more efficient in converting Crude Oil to chemicals as compared with traditional methods.

My two cents for the future would be,

1.Gasoline will be first to take a hit ,followed by fuels for heavier transportation.
2.Crude Oil demand may remain steady (if not growing) for at least the transition period between shift to other energy sources. This demand shall primarily be infrastructure driven. It may be worthy to note that most of the Oil companies have already renamed themselves as Energy Companies while bracing for transition.
3.After the transition, demand for Petrochemicals in developing countries may remain lower than level needed to compensate for dwindling gasoline/Diesel demand and thus same level for Crude Refining.
4.There may be gradual consolidation in downstream sector and less modern/smaller downstream complexes would have to be shutdown.

Eventually the world may stabilize between alternate Clean energy for Transportation and Electricity while the Crude Oil may solely be utilized as base-stock for manufacturing Petro-Chemicals. Utilization of Natural gas (as cleaner fuel ) may remain somewhere in the transition from Crude Oil to Alternate/Renewables. My personal opinion is that utilization of Lean Natural gas should be replace Coal Powered Power-plants rather than switching as automotive fuel.

Now this Energy Shift in upcoming years is going to generate a lot of Social, Economic and Political Turbulence in the coming Next decades. Let that be topic of some other discussion !

[Typhoon]

Climate change is real whether you believe it or not and the demand for oil is dwindling, take a look at the number of refineries closing down according to this Reuters report (https://gulfnews.com/business/these-....1605427507643)

Less than 1% of all the cars on the road today are electric, and if we are seeing electrification (for road/rail transport and domestic purposes) as our future we see very little being discussed about storage of this amount of electricity and the infrastructure needed for local sub stations to support increased demands, blackouts etc, which I think we should do.
Energy of the future will come from a multitude of different options - hydrogen fuel cells, fossil fuels (to some extent), wind energy, electricity, solar etc.

Because of the traction climate change has got, as someone rightly pointed out earlier, people now are not proud to be associated with oil companies and there has been a big decline in people applying for jobs in this industry. But we still need oil in the near term until a sustainable alternative and infrastructure is set up. We need oil extraction in a responsible and efficient manner and to plug all the huge holes we have dug up around the world or for their maintenance to make sure there are no leakages, lest we look at a Texaco like oil spill disaster. Shell is building 10MW electrolysers in Germany and got plans for other places, and all the smart players in oil industry are investing to become more efficient.

Lastly, I think new urge for superiority will arise around the world with who's got what mineral resources with equivalent OPECs coming up and world without oil will suddenly not become peaceful, but definitely cleaner

[ads11]

Originally Posted by RJK

Adding to what Zignor has said, Oil & gas indeed does employ a huge pool of people, including myself. The last year has been quite unforgiving, especially for the drilling contractors or the oil rig owners that I also work for. Jobs losses have been rampant and thoughtless. It’s really a toughest time to be in the industry given that I have seen only last 7yrs of it (essentially got in once the downturn began )

@maddy42 - Though ads has given correct explanation about the extraction of oil and deposits of HC’s the real reason, like any other business is purely commercial. The biggest energy & retail conglomerate in India has a lot to do with it. ONGC being a typical govt entity doesn’t help either as they are more than happy to waste tax payers money. The company men or Operators representatives (ONGC in this case) don’t step out of their accommodation on to the drill floor for most part and are very happy as long as they get their steady supply of dry fruits and great food in the mess room. Long story short - yes, oil and/or gas reserves not being developed is by design, much like any other PSU business

Congratulations on at least managing to get your foot in the door especially at that time! I took the safer option and ensconced myself in academia hoping to ride out the downturn and it was all going peachy, right until COVID. Oh well.. The industry as a whole has always been a hire and fire industry. When the going is good and prices are high, exploration managers are gung ho about the prospects they want to drill and services companies and consultants rake it in with all the work they get. Soon as the price hits a nosedive, again and again the stewards fall back on the same old tropes. Cut headcount, cut outside contractor and services work, cut rig numbers, and so on. The frustrating thing is a lot of senior leadership recognise this and bemoan the lack of a long term view to operations but it just seems to be the norm.

My only experience with ONGC thus far was trying to get hold of some seismic data offshore Andaman and Nicobar. Christ, it's like getting blood from a stone with that lot. All I can say about the management outlook there is that it's a very archaic one. I've spoken to academics based in India and they face the same hurdles. Simply sitting on good data and outright refusing to let research groups have a crack at it, just reminds me of your scenario of the operations geologist not bothering to get out to the rig. It's so frustrating really, how closed minded the leadership is there.