US Energy Trade Balance -- Idle Rambling -- EIA Graphic -- October 20, 2018

From twitter:

This is a most interesting graph.

• Time line:
• two lost decades + first year of Trump administration
• Big picture:
• Bush II: 2000 - 2008 -- "energy" imports went from $100 billion to an astounding $500 billion; even importing coal; what the heck was he doing? looks like something one would expect from a "Jimmy Carter" presidency
• Obama: 2008 - 2016 -- incredibly, he stopped the bleeding; of course, a lot of this was due to the economy, but with regard to energy, mano a mano, Obama has bragging rights; following Bush II, under Obama things turned around
• Coal: 
• the US actually imported coal during the Bush II years; what was that all about?
• that ended with Obama (2013 may have been an exception)
• not only that, but coal exports in 2011 - 2012 (Obama) remarkable 
• after dropping back to "zero," US coal exports resumed in Trump's first year
• Natural gas:
• imports picked up in Bush's fourth year and then reached "steady state"
• shale gas revolution turned that around during Obama's presidency
• look at the amount of blue (imports) during the Bush years; how fast that changed during the Obama years
• still not seeing the "natural gas export story"; that should change (but ...)
• Petroleum products:
• 2015 - 2016: an anomaly; an interruption of the inevitable; slowdown due to global economic downturn? Saudi Surge occurred at this time but not sure how the Saudi Surge would affect US petroleum products exports
• Crude oil imports:
• at some point, we might see crude oil imports / exports balance out
• US needs foreign heavy oil to balance the glut of its domestic light oil

*************************************

About That "Foreign Oil"

For newbies. This is a not-ready-for-prime-time note that was in an e-mail reply to a reader who asked two questions:

• why is ND heavy sour priced lower than ND sweet when US refineries are optimized for heavy oil? and,
• why doesn't President Trump do more to stop imports of "all" foreign oil.

My reply, again, not-ready-for-prime-time and simply posted to move the discussion along. Facts and opinions are mixed in the reply below; my opinion and $2.11 will buy you a cup of Starbucks coffee. So here goes:

1. Why is heavy sour priced lower than sweet light? Short-term: pipelines won't mix sour oil with sweet oil. They generally won't mix heavy oil with light oil either (exception being a small amount of light oil used as diluent to move very heavy Canadian sands oil through pipelines).

2. That was the fallacy with the proponents (e.g., Senator Baucus of Montana) who agreed to support the Keystone XL only on the condition it would ship Bakken oil. TransCanadian gave in to that ridiculous proposal but it means that six days a week, Keystone XL would ship heavy oil from Canada, then purge the line and on the seventh day, ship Bakken light oil.

3. Long term: companies are running away from sour oil as fast as they can. It's pretty much a "dead" oil after 2020 or whenever the global restrictions on sour oil kick in. There will still be a market for sour oil, but it will be a niche market. Maybe China tea-pots will like sour oil.

4. The amount of imported foreign oil is trivial compared to overall production in the US. The imported oil is niche:

a)  California absolutely depends on foreign heavy oil; California is an island; they won't build pipelines into California for good reason; and they will never build any new refineries in California no matter what; they are stuck with what they have

b) Saudi Arabia has a huge refinery along Texas/Louisiana coast; Saudi will use its oil to supply that refinery

c) US refiners along the TX/LA coast are geared for heavy oil, as you note; they were burned years ago when they re-configured from light oil to heavy oil thinking the oil from western Canada would get here; they won't do that again --  two risks:

c1) it's always possible Canadian heavy oil will reach US through pipelines; as it is, "enough" heavy oil from Canada is reaching the US via CBR

c2) it's always possible, a "Hillary" president would absolutely kill the oil industry just as Obama almost killed the US coal industry

5. On the other hand, the trivial amount of foreign oil being imported is absolutely necessary so that light oil can be used in heavy-oil-optimized refineries. RBN Energy discussed "bar-bell blending" (heavy oil and light oil at either end of the bar-bell) years ago.  Although not particularly relevant to this discussion, RBN Energy talked about blending just last week.

There are a lot of folks who think "oil" is dead twenty years from now (demand destruction; renewables; mandates; regulations; etc) -- and we're not talking just about far-left kooks. Even BP and XOM are making moves to hedge their bets on oil.

*******************************

Time Is Quantum

The God Problem, Howard Bloom, c. 2016, p. 527:

In the eyes of most modern physicists, time is not continuous. Time is not like a children's slide .. time is like a staircase. You have to take one step at a time. And each step is the same distance part.... you can take an elevator from the fourth floor to the fourteenth floor, but you can't take the elevator to the 14.75th floor --well, actually you can, but ...

And there's "plenty" of time during the "riser" for interesting things to happen.

There's still a lot of book left; I don't know where the writer will go with this but if time is quantum .. wow ... I assume string theorists have worked that into their equations ... but this is the first time I've read about "quantum time" and I've never read anything about quantum time when reading about string theory

The fact that I've not read about quantum time before (nor since) makes me wonder if "quantum time" is still a valid model?

*******************************

What Condition Is My Condition In?