Safehold Oil and Gas Industry

Weird Harold wrote:

saber964 wrote:...Safehold will continue to use coal for the short term, but in the next 3-5 years to as long as 10 years before the ICN switches to oil fired boilers. Remember in the RW the various navies didn't start converting coal-fired ships to oil fired until the 20's and some into early 30's. Also the various navies didn't start purpose building oil fired ships until the early and mid-teens.

My point was that Safehold does have the opportunity to bypass an economy based on burning non-renewable resources. The real world has a million better uses for petroleum than burning it for energy and dozens of alternative energy sources. Safehold can move directly to those alternative energy sources thanks to OWL's historical record of how the Terran Federation dealt with the depletion of fossil fuels.

They can easily skip over the worst aspects of a fossil fuel economy but skipping to things like solar power and practical wind generation will be tough.

IIRC Howsmyn is already looking for ways to limit pollution and it's effects. He's probably going to be the first manufacturer to convert his boilers to oil-fired ones. He's probably already trying to limit damage from mining waste.

Something to keep in mind is that Safehold is rather likely not to have the resources to support long-term massive use of fossil fuels. Assuming current theories on the subject are reasonably accurate, the necessary conditions for creating them will have obtained over smaller regions and for much shorter times than on Earth - there may, for example, never have been a true equivalent of the Carboniferous. The tectonic history, I suspect [it's rather hard to guess at without adequate geologic maps] has probably been somewhat less conducive to the creation of suitable trap deposits, so a lot of what exists may still be in oil shales or stuck under a couple of kilometers of yet to erode overburden. It has also occurred to me more than once that Safehold may be significantly younger than Earth, so there simply hasn't _been_ the time required for a lot of hydrocarbons to accumulate and collect into usable deposits.

saber964 wrote:

Weird Harold wrote:
My point was that Safehold does have the opportunity to bypass an economy based on burning non-renewable resources. The real world has a million better uses for petroleum than burning it for energy and dozens of alternative energy sources. Safehold can move directly to those alternative energy sources thanks to OWL's historical record of how the Terran Federation dealt with the depletion of fossil fuels.

They can easily skip over the worst aspects of a fossil fuel economy but skipping to things like solar power and practical wind generation will be tough.

IIRC Howsmyn is already looking for ways to limit pollution and it's effects. He's probably going to be the first manufacturer to convert his boilers to oil-fired ones. He's probably already trying to limit damage from mining waste.

Louis R wrote:Something to keep in mind is that Safehold is rather likely not to have the resources to support long-term massive use of fossil fuels. Assuming current theories on the subject are reasonably accurate, the necessary conditions for creating them will have obtained over smaller regions and for much shorter times than on Earth - there may, for example, never have been a true equivalent of the Carboniferous. The tectonic history, I suspect [it's rather hard to guess at without adequate geologic maps] has probably been somewhat less conducive to the creation of suitable trap deposits, so a lot of what exists may still be in oil shales or stuck under a couple of kilometers of yet to erode overburden. It has also occurred to me more than once that Safehold may be significantly younger than Earth, so there simply hasn't _been_ the time required for a lot of hydrocarbons to accumulate and collect into usable deposits.

Other than blind guessing, I have no idea how you could come to any of those conclusions. As David Weber has never addressed any of those points, nor has he given any indication that any of the above would be true. Nor can you take safehold being, currently, colder than Earth is now as being indicative. As Earth has been a solid frozen ice planet, and a solid equator to pole jungle planet as well as everything in between, in our past. Planets go through different phases, wildly different phases.

educated guessing works quite nicely

Isilith wrote:

Louis R wrote:Something to keep in mind is that Safehold is rather likely not to have the resources to support long-term massive use of fossil fuels. Assuming current theories on the subject are reasonably accurate, the necessary conditions for creating them will have obtained over smaller regions and for much shorter times than on Earth - there may, for example, never have been a true equivalent of the Carboniferous. The tectonic history, I suspect [it's rather hard to guess at without adequate geologic maps] has probably been somewhat less conducive to the creation of suitable trap deposits, so a lot of what exists may still be in oil shales or stuck under a couple of kilometers of yet to erode overburden. It has also occurred to me more than once that Safehold may be significantly younger than Earth, so there simply hasn't _been_ the time required for a lot of hydrocarbons to accumulate and collect into usable deposits.

Other than blind guessing, I have no idea how you could come to any of those conclusions. As David Weber has never addressed any of those points, nor has he given any indication that any of the above would be true. Nor can you take safehold being, currently, colder than Earth is now as being indicative. As Earth has been a solid frozen ice planet, and a solid equator to pole jungle planet as well as everything in between, in our past. Planets go through different phases, wildly different phases.

Educated guessing can indeed do nicely.

But like logic, it can also be a way of being wrong with confidence.

Don

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saber964 wrote:
They can easily skip over the worst aspects of a fossil fuel economy but skipping to things like solar power and practical wind generation will be tough.

IIRC Howsmyn is already looking for ways to limit pollution and it's effects. He's probably going to be the first manufacturer to convert his boilers to oil-fired ones. He's probably already trying to limit damage from mining waste.

I'm afraid not. One thing that modern materials have in common is that they are energy intensive and hard to purify without large quantities of electricity. So you need serious fossil fueled power generation to go clean with solar panels (which need silicon, chemically pure aluminum and phosphorous (for doping and conductors)) and electrical conductors which for efficiency need chemically pure copper and aluminum extracted by electrolysis.
Hopefully he doesn't have the hassle of some copper mines of my acquaintance of disposing of radioactive waste slag from the smelter. (i.e. with nasty levels of polonium (enough so the the slag never actually cools off entirely and radiation levels limiting exposure times to a matter of hours) and enough uranium to be worth extracting on its own to get at the gold and silver content....)
Constructing large wind turbines has similar issues with glass and carbon fiber construction of blades as carbon fiber starts as synthetic polymer fiber made from oil products.

AirTech wrote:I'm afraid not. One thing that modern materials have in common is that they are energy intensive and hard to purify without large quantities of electricity. So you need serious fossil fueled power generation to go clean with solar panels (which need silicon, chemically pure aluminum and phosphorous (for doping and conductors)) and electrical conductors which for efficiency need chemically pure copper and aluminum extracted by electrolysis.

Electricity may be needed for refining the materials for Photovoltaic power, but it does NOT have to be fossil fuel powered. Steam can be generated many ways that don't involve burning fossil fuels -- including with Solar Reflectors. Steam is also not the only way to generate electricity in large amounts; Hydroelectric from large dams or tidal installations can generate more than enough to jump start cleaner energy solutions.

AirTech wrote:Constructing large wind turbines has similar issues with glass and carbon fiber construction of blades as carbon fiber starts as synthetic polymer fiber made from oil products.

And that is really my whole point about skipping over any technology that burns fossil fuels; we have better (and recyclable) uses for fossil hydrocarbons than burning the so they can't be recycled.

Safehold has sustainable (and expandable) sources for hydrocarbon fuels for those very few applications that absolutely require them. Fire Vine plantations can be planted and expanded over a couple of mostly "unsanctified" continents, for example.

I have no idea how the Terran Federation solved the problems our petroleum based modern world has. They obviously have micro-fusion power down pat, but how they got there is handwavium.

The steel industry is one of the major consumers of metallurgical coal and also consumes large quantities of electricity, natural gas and petroleum. Coal is the major fuel of public utilities for the generation of power and is essential to the steel industry for the manufacture of coke. Natural gas has replaced coal to a considerable extent for domestic and industrial heating due to the installation of very large pipelines from producing to consuming centers, the relative level in the price of natural gas over the intervening time, and its convenience, cleanliness, controllability and versatility as a fuel. The byproduct gaseous fuels—coke-oven gas and blast furnace gas—are major integrated steel industry fuels. Fuel oil is utilized predominantly in the blast furnace as an injectant for coke replacement, in reheating furnaces as a substitute for gaseous fuels and in boilers as a backup fuel for other byproduct fuels.

I don't see Howy using any other fuels in the forseeable future.

Weird Harold wrote:And that is really my whole point about skipping over any technology that burns fossil fuels; we have better (and recyclable) uses for fossil hydrocarbons than burning the so they can't be recycled.

Safehold has sustainable (and expandable) sources for hydrocarbon fuels for those very few applications that absolutely require them. Fire Vine plantations can be planted and expanded over a couple of mostly "unsanctified" continents, for example.

I have no idea how the Terran Federation solved the problems our petroleum based modern world has. They obviously have micro-fusion power down pat, but how they got there is handwavium.

Two major issues you are deliberately ignoring. Burning of fossil fuels solved several major problems. Power (and heat) when and where needed being the biggest. This is why attempts to have grid scale wind are doomed to failure, it is intermittent and non-dispatchable. Another thing that fossil fuels have going for them is that they tend to be much more energy dense than the alternatives(measured as BTU/Ton, BTU/$ or BTU/ Cubic ft).

While a lot of evirowackos point to various anti-pollution laws as cleaning up air and water, much of this was due to reduced waste as a side effect. Prior to 1950 most people in the US and western Europe did their cooking and heated their homes with wood or coal. By 1990 this was quite rare in those regions. Why? Oil and gas firing did not require someone to stoke the furnace at least once every 3-12 hours. That oil and gas burn much cleaner is a pleasant side effect. That the UMWA would go on strike in the winter did nothing to convince consumers that coal supply was reliable. Note for most of the period 1920 to 2009 Coal, Crude Oil, and Natural gas all were about the same price per BTU.

Captain Igloo wrote:I don't see Howy using any other fuels in the forseeable future.

He's already built dams for hydraulic/water power that are easily convertible to hydro-electric. Since all that will require is the generators and transformers I would think he'd go that route rather than build steam plants that require building entire generating facilities and inventing steam turbines.