Agree Completely: Even Rapid Transition To Lower-Carbon World Won't Kill Demand For Crude -- BP -- February 14, 2019

Let's Get Serious

From Financial Times:

Global oil demand will prove resilient over the next two decades even if ambitious targets set in the Paris climate change accord are met and the adoption of renewable energy is “off the charts,” according to BP’s annual energy outlook. I

In a “rapid transition” to a lower-carbon world, set out by the UK oil and gas company on Thursday, demand for crude would only drop 20 per cent by 2040. The scenario included the most efficient use of energy by industry and buildings, increased electrification of transport and radical policies to clean up the power sector.

“Oil is playing a major role in the energy system out to 2040 . . . even with renewables off the charts,” said Spencer Dale, BP’s chief economist. “The level of understanding about the arithmetic on some of this stuff is not as high as it could be.”

Exxon has been saying this for decades. By the way, that BP story above -- that seems like a shift in editorial policy from BP. For the past several years BP has been beating the drum for renewable energy.

From earlier this week: RBN Energy: massive shift of US crude oil, natural gas and NGLs into global markets.

U.S. crude oil, NGL and gas markets have entered a new era. Exports now dominate the supply/demand equilibrium. These markets simply would not clear at today’s production levels, much less at the flow rates coming over the next few years, if not for access to global markets. This year, the U.S. may export 20-25% of domestic crude production, 15% of natural gas and 40% of NGLs from gas processing, and those percentages will continue to ramp up. What will this massive shift in energy flows mean for U.S. markets, and for that matter, for the rest of the world?

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Everything Else

Happy Valentine's Day. Looks like Schelosi will sene President Trump a valentine care with $1.5 billion to continue building the wall.

Solar contraction:

Massachusetts lost 1,320 solar jobs last year, trailing only California, as the industry suffered its second straight year of falling employment, according to the Solar Foundation's annual jobs census. Massachusetts also fell to third among states in solar jobs, with 10,210, ceding the spot to Florida, which added 1,769 jobs to bring its total to 10,358. The report said installations of solar panels in Mass. were held back by the introduction of demand charges, the minimum price that solar panel owners pay to utilities per month, and uncertainty surrounding the state's SMART program, a newer form of state-sanctioned subsidies to reimburse solar panel owners that is somewhat less generous than a previous program. -- s/ Chesto, over at The Boston Globe.

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 The Book Page

From Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman, James Gleick, c. 1992, page 338. 

If this book has a climax, this may be it. Richard Feynman, 1957, thirty-nine years old, is depressed. He has not found the "right problem" to solve. Then, in September, 1957, he co-writes an article that reaches Physical Review just days before another team reports a similar theory at a conference in Padua, Italy. 

The discovery was esoteric compared to other milestones of modern physics. If Feynman, Gell-Mann, Marshak, or Sudarshan had not made it in 1957, others would have soon after. Ye to Feynman it was as pure an achievement as any in his career: the unveiling of a law of nature. His model had always been Dirac's magical discovery of an equation for the election.

In a sense, Feynman had discovered an equation for the neutrino.

"There was a moment when I knew how nature worked," he said. "It had elegance and beauty. The goddamn thing was gleaming." 

To other physicists, "Theory of the Fermi Interaction," barely six pages long, shone like a beacon in the literature. It seemed to announce the beginning of a powerful collaboration between two great and complementary minds.

Feynman died shortly before midnight, February 15, 1988, seventy years old or thereabouts.

 

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Politics

It's getting serious -- it looks like someone was out to out-Hoover J. Edgar.