Heavy Oil Is Dead. Long Live Heavy Oil -- February 12, 2022 -- Updated December 25, 2024

Locator: 44528GRAPHITE.

InsideEVs: link here.

EVs: link here. 

• scorecard
• cash burn 
• graphite
•  not for me. 
• "Energy transition is dead" is followed here. 
• EVs charging. 
• batteries.
  
• cold weather -- reality sets in -- January, 2024
• resale value -- a deal-breaker

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Updates

December 25, 2024, link here: US graphite manufacturers want Chinese tariffs to rise to 920%. This comes at a time when President-elect wants to significantly increase tariffs on Chinese exports.

• currently, 25% tariff on most graphite imports from China
• China holds 93% of the world’s battery-grade graphite supply
• US holds just 1% of this market

“We estimate the incremental cost could be about US$135 per kWh, representing a 125 per cent increase in the DC-block to around US$255 per kWh,” Justin Clare, managing director at the investment bank, said, as carried by the South China Morning Post. 

The cost of the anode typically accounts for up to 15% of the cost of an entire battery, Clare noted. 

• holy grail for EV batteries: $100 / kWh
• raising the graphite tariff will make it more difficult to reach that target

Australia-based Novonix has just announced a conditional commitment from the U.S. Department of Energy for a loan of up to US$754.8 million to partially finance a proposed new facility in Chattanooga, Tennessee, that would manufacture synthetic graphite primarily for use in EV batteries.

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Archived
This Page Begun February 12, 2022

Link here.

Heavy oil is dead. Long live heavy oil. 

Bottom line:

• batteries need a cathode and an anode
• cathode: lithium
• anode: graphite
• synthetic graphite in only graphite "modern" batteries will use
• natural graphite does not meet criteria for "modern" batteries
• synthetic graphite is made from heavy oil

derivatives:

• explains why western Canadian oil is so "valuable" (think Keystone XL pipeline)
• had the Keystone XL been built, it's very possible a "graphite" refinery would have been built somewhere in Texas to provide the graphic Tesla needs for its batteries
  
• there are two reasons we never hear about the anode:
• the use of heavy oil destroys the narrative; and,
• there is absolutely no shortage of synthetic graphite

Links:

• greentechmedia, all the way back to 2019, this problem was identified;
• Ed Conway's thread on twitter, September 12, 2022
• no mention of need for synthetic graphite
• better explanation?
• manufacturing synthetic graphite

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The Music Page

The birth of the Muscle Shoals sound. Link here. Per Rick Hall himself. Fame Recording Studio.

Contemporaries and Near Contemporaries

 

Bumps Rockwell, 1918 - 1985
Sam Phillips, 1925 - 2003
Rick Hall, 1932 - 2018
Phil Spector, 1939 - 2021