Oil Shock Inflation

[OlderGiantFan]

Damn, this is bad to hear. I'm sorry that the government i pay taxes to is responsible for this.

Don't worry about it, it's been that way since WWII, why should it be any different now. Acceptance is the key!

 

[Hillhater]

Personally I am aiming for 6 months of food storage

That is fine for 6 months, but what about long term food ( and other comodities) security ?
The real lesson here is that isolated countries (like Australia) should nationally become much more self sufficient in key areas such as food, and energy.

You leave out one key difference, the Internet didn't exist nobody has to believe the lies they are told the truth should prevail at some point in time.

That is wishful thinking. !
The internet is an open sewer that can spread as much lies as truths, and is the likely responsible for much of what the world has become. As yet, there is no gold plated filter to sort out the lies from the truth, and so one mans truth is another mans lie .

 

[offGridDownUnder]

We're very sheltered down here, just 27 odd million people sitting on a mountain of coal gas and minerals.

Yes, and I heard an interesting report yesterday - that the LNG mines are being told they can sell outside the country in proportion to what they sell inside the country.

That is, for every unit of LNG you sell in Australia, you can sell 4 units outside. Before this, there was no requirement, and it was market demand/profit driven.

If this holds, then an effect will be the substantial development of domestic LNG use. There is no price attached - they must supply that fraction within Australia. It seems a way to subsidize LNG domestically without actually paying public monies. For now, I am ok with this because it's Australian LNG, not corporation's LNG, and the benefits should go to all of us.

LNG is used in electric plants, and that's a downside - it may stifle solar and wind, and there are vehicles on the road which burn LNG. This policy alone may not have only good consequences.

 

[Hillhater]

That is, for every unit of LNG you sell in Australia, you can sell 4 units outside. Before this, there was no requirement, and it was market demand/profit driven.

If this holds, then an effect will be the substantial development of domestic LNG use. There is no price attached - they must supply that fraction within Australia

Hmm ?.…..so who is going to develop the increase in domestic demand ?
Total LNG production in Au is approx 8,000+ PJ annually
current demand is less than 100 PJ annualised..
So the demand would have to increase to at least 2000+ PJ in order to retain existing export volumes ?
..and, Victoria has banned gas supply to all new builds and also banned the replacement of any gas heating ,cooking, appliances , etc, that fail in the future.
But, not to worry, it is all just a future plan, and nothing comes into effect until existing export contracts expire ..2035 !,,
dont you just love poitics

 

[Hillhater]

there are vehicles on the road which burn LNG.

Very few.
most “ gas fuel” vehicles use LPG.. ( Liquid Petroleum Gas, a butane /propane mix ) , produced from refining oil.
very different to LNG ( Liquified Natural Gas, mostly methane)
Natural Gas fueled electricity generation, is very useful for keeping the lights on when the sun doesnt shine !

 

[OlderGiantFan]

Hmm ?.…..so who is going to develop the increase in domestic demand ?
Victoria has banned gas supply to all new builds and also banned the replacement of any gas heating ,cooking, appliances , etc, that fail in the future.
dont you just love poitics

Yes, like the rest of the world we started on the whole alternate energy net zero stuff but we always lagged, and now like the rest of the world we are hastily backing away from it, especially Wind. Laws can change and often do, the Queensland state government cancelled all it's new wind sites and announced it was committing to coal for 70% of the power for "As long as it's practical"

Oh the environment the environment! Well the small amount we burn compared to China makes it a drop in the bucket, and solar, which is much more practical is very big up here, huge in fact both on houses and commercial buildings. Personally I don't expend much mental or emotional energy on the politics or climate stuff, I realized long ago it's the corporations voting with their $$$ that make the decisions and that people will only really arc up if they are being impoverished. The average person cares about the climate, sure, but more about their power bills.

Funny story... Some years back there was a nationwide 'school strike' and all the young ones, mostly girls, gathered in the cities to protest burning fossil fuels, to protest cars etc. It was quite a big deal, but as I looked through the throngs I saw no older kids, no 16 or 17 year olds, just bunches of 13 and 14yo's. Then it suddenly struck me, the older ones were in the process of getting their licenses and first cars, no way would they protest that, that's freedom and a rite of passage! Then I though a little deeper, how did all those kids get into the city? I saw no puishbikes... Obviously mum drove them in, in the air-conditioned car, from the air-conditioned house. And of course on the way home there would likely be a Victory Lunch at the Mac Donald's drive through

I didn't regard them as hypocrites, they were too young for that, they were just a little delusional is all. Stirred up by Greta Thunbergs world tour. A good example of how people care, but not really.

 

[OlderGiantFan]

Very few.
most “ gas fuel” vehicles use LPG.. ( Liquid Petroleum Gas, a butane /propane mix ) , produced from refining oil.
very different to LNG ( Liquified Natural Gas, mostly methane)
Natural Gas fueled electricity generation, is very useful for keeping the lights on when the sun doesnt shine !

They had begun converting the Brisbane council bus fleet over to Nat Gas, but the fad only lasted a few years then was canned. Must have been a reason?

Apenned off search, AI response "Brisbane City Council is phasing out its Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) bus fleet, with plans to have them all removed by 2027. Following safety concerns and cylinder explosions"
ABC news Brisbane's eco-friendly natural gas buses are being quietly retired and replaced with new diesel-driven coaches.

Diesel is Dead... Long live Diesel

 

[offGridDownUnder]

Must have been a reason?

Yes, but consider that it may be true that part of the reason was entrenched money and politics. The changing situation may re-balance the calculation.

 

[Hillhater]

Apenned off search, AI response "Brisbane City Council is phasing out its Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) bus fleet, with plans to have them all removed by 2027. Following safety concerns and cylinder explosions"
ABC news Brisbane's eco-friendly natural gas buses are being quietly retired and replaced with new diesel-driven coaches.

Whilst i am not aware of any CNG cylinder explosions, it seems a bit extreme to replace the fleet ?
A conversion to LPG with its low pressure cylinders , would have been simpler and less emissions than diesel.
Maybe someone had “connections” with a fleet supplier ?

 

[Apartunis]

Whilst i am not aware of any CNG cylinder explosions, it seems a bit extreme to replace the fleet ?
A conversion to LPG with its low pressure cylinders , would have been simpler and less emissions than diesel.

Natural gas is minimally processed so it does not have a big carbon cost to its production. LPG is made out of petroleum so it has all the well to market footprint of petroleum plus conversion energy costs. Neither is really a green fuel but LPG is super brown. Biomethane would be heaps better than either one but still carries the same risks as CNG.

The big win is people taking the bus instead of driving no matter what fuel it uses.

 

[Hillhater]

Natural gas is minimally processed so it does not have a big carbon cost to its production. LPG is made out of petroleum so it has all the well to market footprint of petroleum plus conversion energy costs. Neither is really a green fuel but LPG is super brown.

Obviously Brisbane city council doesnt rank carbon cost a high priority

 

[OlderGiantFan]

Obviously Brisbane city council doesnt rank carbon cost a high priority

The gas buses were probably just a nod to some Green element back in the day and the reality of filling them on a daily basis proved to be to much of a hassle. What happened to all those people that used to drive gas powered cars? It was a fad, in the end they all went back to liquids. What I found odd was the big switch across to diesel for passenger cars? I mean unless you're pulling 5 tons or going through creek crossings I don't see any benefits. I think many bought into it as a 'tough man' thing but petrol utes are so much more practical for city work, even for contractors. One thing though, it did help to slow the traffic down

My neighbor has the Ranger Wildtrak 5-cylinder and frankly it wouldn't pull the skin a rice pudding. We took a trip in my 08 V6 Vitara 4x4 the other week and I think I genuinely scared him when I planted my foot doing 60 and it dropped back to 2nd and took off like a scalded cat. My model has the GM engine fitted, 230Hp. Also the Wildtrak has a kerb weight of 2250 kg. The Vitara Prestige 1650 kg. Power to weight.

 

[OlderGiantFan]

Whilst i am not aware of any CNG cylinder explosions, it seems a bit extreme to replace the fleet ?

It was a small fleet, only part of the overall fleet which is around 1000 buses I believe. Cost! It's no doubt a lot cheaper to just truck diesel from the port of brisbane 20km away than rely on gas from fields way up north.

 

[Hillhater]

What happened to all those people that used to drive gas powered cars? It was a fad, in the end they all went back to liquids. What I found odd was the big switch across to diesel for passenger cars?

Mostly taxi fleets, and mostly LPG fueled Ford Falcons, and Commodors. With a few dual fuel Mitsubishi 380s
But those became unavailable with the demise of the entire Aussie car industry , and the introduction of hybrids (mostly Camrys) which just happened to have similar operating costs. LPG price increases didnt help either !

What I found odd was the big switch across to diesel for passenger cars?

Diesels have one big advantage,…low rpm Torque ! ..together with long engine life, and fuel efficiency.
….And one big disadvantage…percieved emmisions !
A well developed diesel car ..BMW, Mercedes, Audi, VW, Ford , Peugot, Hyundai, etc , all have much more torque than any equivalent petrol version.
when matched with a good auto gbox, those cars are very smooth to drive.
They will never attract the boy racer types, but will still embarrass a few !
I have owned many cars ( not utes) over time, but the last 4 have all been diesels due to their smooth but lively performance, and economy.
all have been 2.0L turbo diesels with 400-450 Nm of torque, an all have returned between 4-6 L/100 km ( best 3.0 L/100 km )

 

[yooper2001]

My diesel is cleaner than most gassers....baby max 2.8l.

 

[offGridDownUnder]

Musing a bit.

I wasn't there at the time, but I read that Mr. Diesel designed his engines to burn vegetable oil for farmers. Even now, with a bit of processing I understand most passenger diesels will burn food frying oil (mechanical filter plus removing any water).

But consider producing that quantity of vegetable oil world wide.

I can expect the military to want liquid fuels for their energy density and the resistance of diesel engines to attack by EMP - I read that diesels are used on Aircraft Carriers as they do not produce any spark. But all the liquid fuels have the drawback of requiring physical transport and physical storage, including protection against deterioration with time.

Electricity does not have this problem - no appreciable bulk. I think electric motors also miss some of the problems of ICE fuel engines - I don't think that the rare earth magnets deteriorate with time so are not consumed. (Edit: high temperature, physical damage, strong external magnetic fields - but for many human motor uses, these seem avoidable with proper design.)

Batteries/storage remain an issue, but I don't know how that weighs against the bulk of ICE fuels - even alcohol. I wonder if this factor alone might be a definitive answer to the ICE vs electric transport question? We are not going to shrink the physical footprint of ICE fuels on any time frame I know of, and production requires substantial centralized processing. We have a long way to go on battery/storage development.

Mother Earth News published an ethanol fermentation reactor design but pointed out that it was only cost effective at community scale or larger.

But electricity can be produced on personal scale, despite the list of caveats. Electricity can be very decentralized.

To some extent, the published figures about the cost of electricity from renewable sources goes a way to answering the question - apparently it's less expensive already. The contribution of the various subsidies (of the petroleum industry) suggests pushing the balance further towards electricity as fuel.

I'd like to see that analysis.

 

[stancecoke]

I'm having a blast reading your discussion. It must have sounded a lot like the discussions among horse-drawn carriage drivers 120 years ago about whether it was better to feed their horses hay or oats... no offense

 

[Hillhater]

Electricity does not have this problem - no appreciable bulk

No, but for mobile use (vehicles) it need to batteries for storage,….which do have bulk !
a typical 500 km journey would need 70 kWh battery weighing 350-400 kg,
….compared to the 30-40 ltrs (25-35 kg) of liquid fuel for an ice.

We are not going to shrink the physical footprint of ICE fuels on any time frame I know of, and production requires substantial centralizedtr processing. We have a long way to go on battery/storage development

But we can definitely reduce the volume of fuel needed for a typical journey. IE reduce the ltrs/100km.
The centralised processing of liquid fuells is already established , together with the distribution and retail networks.
Battery development and charging technology is only part of the issue.
an effective charging network also has a long way to go still.

 

[99t4]

I wasn't there at the time, but I read that Mr. Diesel designed his engines to burn vegetable oil for farmers. Even now, with a bit of processing I understand most passenger diesels will burn food frying oil (mechanical filter plus removing any water).

Peanut oil. Rudolph Diesel's idea was for farmers to be self sufficient for the energy needs for their mechanized equipment, by growing peanuts (fuel source) on a portion of their fields. But soon after he proved the concept, the petroleum extraction industry managed to convince that its product (refined crude oil) was a more attractive option. Soon after he died under mysterious circumstances.

Twenty years ago I ran my diesel vehicles on the used cooking oil that I filtered and dewatered after picking up from local Teriyaki restaurants.

The older diesel vehicles (mine were '80s vintage) can indeed run without a battery or alternator, once started.

 

[offGridDownUnder]

it need to batteries for storage,….which do have bulk !

But the bulk does not need to be transferred every week. A battery must be transported once every several years - many manufacturers are giving 7 year guarantees on their vehicle batteries routinely now.

The mass and bulk of the liquid ICE fuel requires re-transport on about a weekly time cycle - that is a substantial difference in the energy economy for the usage cost - electricity avoids that.

The liquid ICE fuel is consumed. The battery is not, and the mass of the electricity is negligible.

Did you actually not notice that was the difference? Your answer seems a bit like trolling, which is boring. A thoughtful conversation would be more interesting.

 

[OlderGiantFan]

Well we all have our opinions on what is the best vehicle type for typical urban and rural travel but all the talk and even all the legislation over the past decade hasn't made a serious dent in the number of petrol cars on the road. I consider the masses of non-plugin hybrids which they include in EV numbers now as petrol too, since they charge off the petrol engine. This business of phasing out petrol cars was always nonsense to me, you simply had to ask the basic question, what will they do with the 45% of the oil barrel they are no longer using? I mean it's still going to come out of the refinery, it has to go somewhere? In a sense it's like the ethene component of all that shale gas they are generating in the US, it has little commercial value other than making plastic bags, ergo the world is awash in plastic.

While we continue to extract oil we will continue to use the petrol fractions to power the personal vehicle, nothing surer. That is the trend, and as they say in finance, "the trend is your friend." It explains why diesel is now 40 cents dearer than petrol per liter and will no doubt remain higher, and get higher still in the years to come. Nothing conspiratorial, simply Supply and Demand. The base demand for Diesel is fixed by the need to run mining farming and truck transport engines etc where as the demand for petrol can decrease dramatically, as we saw during covid and during this latest oil shock. The number of used Diesel passenger vehicles for sale here in Oz has Exploded since this began. I see them everywhere on the side of the road out here in the rural back-blocks. carsguide.com.au claims that Diesel sales have declined 10.1 per cent compared to February 2026 and 4.8 per cent overall this year. Petrol sales for the same periods have declined faster though, due to hybrids such as Toyota RAV4 taking over. The article says
"One of the key reasons for these differences is many brands are ditching pure petrol models for electrified variants, as Australia's new vehicle efficiency standards start to impose big consequences for higher-emitting engines."

But there is no battery-electric (BEV) Toyota RAV4, just a petrol hybrid. So petrol cars sales have not declined at all, they have simply rebranded the Lion's share of them as EVs because they added an electric motor to the side of the petrol engine. Does this help with petrol consumption? Well not really, not when the ice engine charges the battery as they do in most sold. It's a friggin shell game.

 

[Matt Gruber]

I ride my ebike to the store. Turned in my car tags 4 years ago. I don't miss driving at all. Too much traffic.(we have a bike road, no cars allowed)

 

[offGridDownUnder]

no cars allowed

That's the way to do it.

I was hoping for/aiming for something like this myself. It was possible where I was living, and isn't where I have moved to. The next state over looks promising for this.

Another pathway is the one that is happening now - no affordable petroleum. Of course we can live without it.

Where I was living before, in Perth, I could put my folding bicycle on any bus or Transperth train and my trike on any of the trains and then ride out from the destination and return home at the end of the day. I let my license lapse until a friend who is losing her sight asked me to renew it so I could drive her around.

Think of personal vehicles like the ELF, and then intercity trains that can carry my ELF to another city - park (on the train) and ride. The widespread use of petroleum vehicles with interstate range (usually used for one passenger for short trips near home) is a serious distortion, which has also led to people not knowing their neighbors in addition to compounding environmental damage that we have yet to see the worst of and probably can't stop.

Stupid is stupid, and is not fixed by desires, even strong ones. Thermodynamics is not listening.

 

[OlderGiantFan]

If you live near the core of a densely populated city you don't need a car, and in the CBD itself, not even a bike unless you struggle with walking. I was in the capital city north of me yesterday, in the CBD for a dental appointment. The core shops and eateries have degraded over the past decade and there are quite a few homeless people wandering about but the number of massive new residential towers is amazing. I don't know who lives in them all, but they must be populated, and the city centre has a good supply of supermarkets and Kmart style stores, inside retrofitted old buildings mostly, so the inhabitants are well supplied with basic food and clothing etc. Quite a few ride-share scooters were zipping about and I assume that is the locals and no doubt some workers who came in by train or bus and are using them to scoot to their jobs. But compared to walkers it was like one in a thousand.

You move out to the inner ring and there are still some scooters but now predominately cars, but further out into the suburbs it's all cars, or buses, and very few bus it anywhere. The exurbs is where the mass of the population live of course, suburbs 20, 40 and even 60km from the city itself and many workers commute vast distances every day. Many of these exurbs are not well serviced by buses, or not at all and train lines are very rare. Either way they most likely won't take you where you want to go as they all basically head back toward the city, not across regions. When I first moved out rural I was commuting twice a week to the city, a one hour trip each way at freeway speeds, that's not uncommon. I never begrudged it, I like driving and there was no traffic, not early when I left. It's a very small minority that are total bike only and naturally many on this forum fall into that category but you have to be living and working in the right place to make it work. Yesterday I caught the electric train into the city but to get to the line I had to drive 30 minutes in the dark through blustering winds and sleety rain at times. So now my rural town like many in the SE Qld region is seeing a buildup of new housing estates and there are not many jobs out here, a car is essential for nearly all of us basically. I bought an ebike to test the waters so to speak, thinking one day it may be the only option to lug heavy loads around my local area. But that's just insurance and I ride it for pleasure, I expect cars to around a long time, especially my remaining lifetime.

 

[Matt Gruber]

One drawback about not driving is I can only carry up to 35 lbs on my ebike.
Possible cure, my neighbor just gave me a bike trailer that is rated 80 lbs she had 2 small kids, too big for it now.
If I see a dead emower, I should be able to get it home. I like free stuff.