back to article Want to see the back of fossil fuels? Calm down, hippies. CAPITALISM has an answer

It's a distinctly lonely intellectual position to have — agreeing with the IPCC that climate change is a problem, one we're causing, and something that we might want to do something about but thinking that we've probably already done what we needed to do. The extent of the Arctic ice cap during the last ice age I'm no expert …

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  1. Lionel Baden
    Unhappy

    A big If

    I Would love to see this as possible and happening.

    I see alot of these technologies come and go, to be never heard from again.

    1. JeffyPoooh

      (Way past) Time for an ordered priority list

      Rather than aim at "fossil fuels", why not aim at the subset that is coal?

      Using nuclear power or natural gas or hydro (instead of coal) to make electricity is rather well developed, but nuclear-powered airliners seem to be a more distant prospect. So why don't we humans implement a multiphase approach where we practice with dirty old CO2-inefficient coal a bit first, and then leaving the more difficult-to-replace liquid fuels until a bit later?

      Here's the implementation plan:

      1) Stop issuing permits for coal mines (easy, zero direct cost)

      2) Slowly ramp up the import duties on coal imports (a money maker)

      3) Slowly and carefully buy up local coal mines (a few hundred billion $)

      4) Slowly and very carefully shut them down over 15 years, gently transitioning the staff

      The goal is to raise the cost of coal so that coal fired power plants will be converted to natural gas (half the CO2 per unit energy), or replaced with nuclear or hydro or whatever. Within about 15 years, coal would be relegated to a niche product. Not banned, just move it way down the list.

      Obviously this is not without costs, but the cost-benefit is off-the-scale efficient and effective.

      Nobody even seems to have an ordered priority list. They're all scatter-brained idiots with zero capability to manage things. It's not the 'deniers' that are the problem; it's the environmentals with zero management skills.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: (Way past) Time for an ordered priority list

        I was with you till, like, step 2. But who is financing step 3 ? Tax payers ? That'll fly... (not).

        - How about reporting health conditions of workers in coal mines ? Eg: fund more studies like: http://www.cdc.gov/niosh/docs/2011-172/pdfs/2011-172.pdf

        - Or, how about a study of goods that were manufactured in coal based energy plants.

        - How about making it affordable for China to move to alternative energy via technology sharing ?

        - put some more reasearch in CCS : http://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/green-science/carbon-capture1.htm

        - How about publishing reports on listed companies whose business relies on coal mining - instruments, mining and transportation... that should make wall street nervous ?

        - How about sharing FB post on open pit coal mines ? http://www.nativelegalupdate.com/2011/02/articles/alaska-native-village-asks-united-nations-to-help-stop-open-pit-coal-mine-in-tribal-territory/

        1. JeffyPoooh
          Pint

          Re: (Way past) Time for an ordered priority list

          AC: "...who is financing step 3 ?"

          The word "trillions" is often used in these discussions, and with two digits.

          Hundreds of billions is less than the cost of a medium size war, and we engage in those by the dozen. Governments might consider raising such funds by, for example, no longer allowing major corporations to avoid paying any income taxes. Perhaps by applying import duties on "Trademark Rights" or other vehicles used to balance the books when sneaking profits out.

          Buying up coal mines (etc.) is probably THE most cost-effective possible solution. And, by comparison to all the other hair-shirt suggestions, is relatively painless and fair. Electricity stays on. Nobody gets hurt.

          If we'd started this in 1999, then we'd be pretty much done this single suggestion by now.

          And we'd would thus have been a big chunk of the way towards the totality of CO2 reductions required. Find another two similar bight ideas and the ENTIRE CO2 thing can be marked done.

          1. Fluffy Bunny
            Facepalm

            Re: (Way past) Time for an ordered priority list

            "a big chunk of the way towards the totality of CO2 reductions required"

            Er, what do you mean "required". If you believe in CAGW (note the use of the word believe, as in not supported by facts), then it may be logical to also believe you need to reduce CO2 output. But transferring consumption from coal to oil won't actually solve anything.

            We have far more coal available for extraction than oil. Limits on availability of coal are hundreds of years away. Oil, a few decades. It makes no sense to cut out coal consumption and replace it with oil consumption. Rather, we need to do the reverse.

            1. JeffyPoooh
              Pint

              Re: (Way past) Time for an ordered priority list

              "...transferring consumption from coal to oil won't actually solve anything."

              Please pay better attention. I didn't mention oil as an alternative to coal powered power stations, because that would be a poor replacement. I did mention nuclear, natural gas, hydro, or 'something else' (does NOT imply oil).

              Let's take Natural Gas as the least best of the alternatives mentioned. Per unit energy, it emits one-half the CO2 as compared to coal. Or put another way, coal emits twice the CO2 as compares to natural gas. Did you know that? If you don't know these details, then the whole debate would become a confusing swirling cloud in one's mind.

              Coal is more than one-third of all CO2 emissions, so if we could slowly but firmly move that down to less than one-half of its existing volumes (a practical change, not a 'religious' outright ban) by raising the price in an orderly manner, then this one change would provide a significant fraction of the total CO2 solution. Address Cement Making and Deforestation, and we'd be pretty much done already. And nobody gets seriously hurt as we would coddle the miners during their transition to early retirement..

              This proposal is the best first step. Obviously. No argument.

            2. JeffyPoooh
              Pint

              Re: (Way past) Time for an ordered priority list

              "believe"

              Climate skeptics play a useful role. They'd be double-checking the math and fact checking the assumptions. It's a key role in science. It's literally anti-science to tell them to shut up.

              But it doesn't mean that anyone needs to actually debate with them, any more than NASA would debate orbital mechanics with the Flat Earth Society.

            3. The First Dave

              Re: (Way past) Time for an ordered priority list

              I quite agree - coal is only useful for two things that I am aware of: smelting iron and burning for heat. Oil, on the other hand, is an essential input for massive numbers of chemical processes, and should be reserved for that use.

              Natural gas is great for pumping round to people's homes, and is totally wasted on leccy production.

              1. Alan Brown Silver badge

                Re: (Way past) Time for an ordered priority list

                "Coal is only useful for two things that I am aware of: smelting iron and burning for heat."

                Other than the (minimal) carbon requirement to make steel (and coal isn't consistent enough quality/contaminant-free to do that anyway), you can get the necessary heat from a LFTR reactor.

                As far as using solar PV to store energy, to then use to generate heat: with an overall efficiency of less than 5% (PV efficiency, electrolysis efficiency, etc) you'd be better off putting the solar heat directly into hot water or molten salts and extracting that heat for warmth or to drive a stirling motor for AC/power.

      2. The Vociferous Time Waster

        Re: (Way past) Time for an ordered priority list

        Ghost of Thatcher?

    2. ecofeco Silver badge
      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: A big If

        What are you guys talking about ? These numbers are clearly made up.

        In case you were sleeping, the "G̶l̶o̶b̶a̶l̶ ̶W̶a̶r̶m̶i̶n̶g̶ Climate Change" fad is already over. Free market has prevailed and communists have lost. Time for America to get back to work and you looser hippies are not stopping us this time.

        1. Maty
          Headmaster

          Re: A big If

          'Time for America to get back to work and you looser hippies are not stopping us this time.'

          Time for the tighter hippies to step up ...

        2. briesmith

          Re: A big If

          And the tighter ones do what? :)

  2. Anonymous Blowhard
    Stop

    "Yes, I know, hydrogen is difficult to get"

    It's not difficult to get, but it is difficult to store and distribute when compared with hydrocarbon fuels; so being able to make hydrogen using solar power and then make electricity from hydrogen is not a complete solution.

    And scaling these technologies is usually the problem; a few years ago bio-fuels were all the rage, until it was pointed out that there isn't enough farmland to grow enough to replace even a fraction of the fossil fuels that we use.

    Economists love to count chickens before they're hatched, so don't go encouraging them.

    1. NumptyScrub

      quote: "It's not difficult to get, but it is difficult to store and distribute when compared with hydrocarbon fuels; so being able to make hydrogen using solar power and then make electricity from hydrogen is not a complete solution."

      I'd argue that the completeness of that as a solution is merely one of scale. If you can get enough H2 and electricity from solar to be able to completely replace your current energy providers, it becomes a complete solution. Home gas appliances can all be replaced by electric appliances (electric cookers and heating), and transport can be run on H2, it's just less energy dense than petrol. Make it cheaper per unit energy than petrol, and people are naturally going to switch when the choice becomes pertinent to them.

      Then there's just the safety issues to address; personally I don't think H2 as a fuel is any more dangerous than LPG or petrol overall, but irrational public fears are still fears. Make sure that H2 powered vehicles are crash tested to the same standards as petrol vehicles (including passenger safety) and we should be good to go :)

      1. mark 63 Silver badge

        " If you can get enough H2 and electricity from solar to be able to completely replace your current energy providers..."

        Yes that would be lovely but it aint gonna happen. The sun is dropping x amount of sunlight on the planet, the energy stored in the oil we use is the result of the sun doing that for thousands and thousands of years. And we've used up half the oil in in 150 years. and the other half will take more energy to get it out that we'll get from it.

        1. Chris Miller

          @mark 63

          The geological process for producing oil, coal etc is immensely inefficient. Current global energy usage is a tiny fraction of total insolation. Look it up.

          So we can easily* (even with current technology) meet all our energy requirements from sunlight. What we can't do is store it in an energy-dense form that can be as effectively distributed as petrochemicals can.

          * Easily, in the sense that we'd need to invest trillions in solar farms and electricity grids, but the numbers work.

          1. JeffyPoooh
            Pint

            Re: @mark 63

            "...meet all our energy requirements from sunlight."

            Perhaps we should start with the easier and more cost-effective end of 'some', before attempting the 'all'.

        2. briesmith

          Wrong, wrong and wrong again

          "we've used up half the oil in in 150 years. and the other half will take more energy to get it out that we'll get from it."

          Just how wrong can one short post get? Is this one a record?

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: Wrong, wrong and wrong again

            "we've used up half the oil in in 150 years. and the other half will take more energy to get it out that we'll get from it."

            "Just how wrong can one short post get? Is this one a record?"

            Care to share, for the readers who aren't so well informed as you clearly are?

      2. WonkoTheSane
        Mushroom

        "Then there's just the safety issues to address; personally I don't think H2 as a fuel is any more dangerous than LPG or petrol overall, but irrational public fears are still fears"

        I don't know. You blow up one little zeppelin...

      3. imanidiot Silver badge

        Then there's just the safety issues to address; personally I don't think H2 as a fuel is any more dangerous than LPG or petrol overall, but irrational public fears are still fears. Make sure that H2 powered vehicles are crash tested to the same standards as petrol vehicles (including passenger safety) and we should be good to go :)

        Not quite. You could easily open up an LPG tank to atmosphere and let it sit there for a while without problem. (People have done it, replacing the fill gauge on a tank while it's filled is not really THAT dangerous). Petrol is also very docile. It'll just sit there all day long, happily exposed to the atmosphere and requires quite a lot of energy to ignite. A lit cigarette won't do.

        Hydrogen needs to either be stored cryogenically (VERY cold and requires constant burning off of the evaporating gasses if they are not used otherwise) or stored under very high pressure.

        An LPG tank needs to be heated before it'll create a proper explosion. Just tossing an opened tank into a fire will only create a conflegration. Same with petrol. It'll burn quite spectacularly, probably create a good whoosh, maybe even a bang, but the damage to the surroundings will be limited. A closed LPG tank in a fire (would normally allow quite some time to get it cooled before exploding).

        Crash testing to the same level as a petrol vehicle would not do. Some leakage of petrol or LPG is not really a problem. Any leakage of hydrogen IS.

      4. Anonymous Blowhard

        @ NumptyScrub

        "I'd argue that the completeness of that as a solution is merely one of scale"

        And that was my point about scaling; how much area of solar collection is required to provide enough hydrogen to replace the UK's natural gas consumption?

        Don't get me wrong, I'm very much in favour of using technology to solve environmental issues, and replacing natural gas with hydrogen would be a very good start for reducing the UK's carbon emissions and achieving energy security. I just know that small scale experiments don't always scale to the required capacity that easily; it often takes decades of development, which these days is compounded by years of legal proceedings to resolve IP battles.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: @ Anonymous Blowhard

          "And that was my point about scaling; how much area of solar collection is required to provide enough hydrogen to replace the UK's natural gas consumption?"

          Ignoring cooking and process gas, total space and water heating needs of the UK are 600 TWh per annum (from DECC data). Because at best power-to gas conversion is around 70% efficient, you'd need 860 TWh of solar PV output (ceteris paribus).

          At a representative 100 kWh per square metre per year for a PV panel in the real world you'd need 8,600 square kilometres of solar PV, an area about the same as Gloucestershire, Staffordshire, and West Sussex put together.

          Can't see that happening myself.

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: @ Anonymous Blowhard

            Hmm. Well, solar panels only need a reasonably flat surface. Maybe you could put them on top of existing contruction. Like, say, rooftops.

          2. Alan Brown Silver badge

            Re: @ Anonymous Blowhard

            "At a representative 100 kWh per square metre per year for a PV panel in the real world you'd need 8,600 square kilometres of solar PV, an area about the same as Gloucestershire, Staffordshire, and West Sussex put together."

            If you added the rooftop area of the uk together you'd probably come close.

            A more practical measurement would be "Can the average UK house supply 100% of its annual electricty and heating needs from a roof-mounted solar installation." - the answer being "no, of course not"

            1. briesmith

              Re: @ Anonymous Blowhard

              Or, say, Scotland?

      5. Alan Brown Silver badge

        Hydrogen has a number of nasty issues

        " If you can get enough H2 and electricity from solar to be able to completely replace your current energy providers, it becomes a complete solution. Home gas appliances can all be replaced by electric appliances (electric cookers and heating), and transport can be run on H2, it's just less energy dense than petrol. "

        Hydrogen at any significant pressure has a nasty habit of embrittling metals, especially if there's any carbon content in them. It is even worse for things like flexible hoses, which will go brittle even at atmospheric pressure or the extremely low pressures used by household delivery systems.

        That's quite apart from the issue of throwing more than 50% of the input energy overboard when electrolysing water to make hydrogen (on top of the max ~20% efficiency of solar PV.), compared with what you get when you burn it or pass it through a fuell cell.

    2. dotdavid

      "until it was pointed out that there isn't enough farmland to grow enough to replace even a fraction of the fossil fuels that we use"

      I'd heard they were looking at algae, which doesn't need farmland. Although I'm guessing it might have a negative effect on marine ecosystems.

      1. Alan Brown Silver badge

        "I'd heard they were looking at algae, which doesn't need farmland. Although I'm guessing it might have a negative effect on marine ecosystems."

        That depends where you grow it. There is a lot of "unproductive land" which has water resources (pollluted or not doesn't matter for this use), the right climate (warm to hot, with lots of sun) and can be used for the purpose.

    3. Chris Miller

      I agree that H2 is problematic to store and distribute. But I think Tim is talking about a home-scale operation, where you have cheap solar panels to provide electricity during the day, and you crack the storage problem by generating H2 for use overnight - so you wouldn't need to store all that much of it.

      I used to be with a small (compared to SSE, EDF etc) outfit called Flow Energy, who have a cunning plan to use the waste heat from your gas boiler to generate electricity. They reckon that they can afford to install the technology in your home at their own cost, lock you into a five year contract, after which time they've made a profit and let you continue using your new boiler. They have consumer trials going on at the moment, but haven't gone into production yet.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        "They have consumer trials going on at the moment, but haven't gone into production yet."

        There's a shed-load of micro-generation schemes like this - fuel cells, waste-heat-to-electricity, sterling engines, mini-turbine CHP. I currently work for a company that has interests across this portfolio, and I've seen nothing that convinces me that Tim Worstall's ideas are coming true any time soon, or that local generation will supplant the grid. Even micro-gen CHP struggles when a modern boiler can offer 92% efficiency - how much complexity, additional cost do you want to eke out that 8%, and how effective will be the conversion of it?

        It isn't that you can't do (eg) wind to H2 conversions, store energy as compressed air, grid scale batteries, or all the other ideas. And I can say that because my employers have large scale plant doing this already. But the problem is that these assets are capital intensive and often involve multiple lossy conversions, and there's no prospective magic bullet from technology that is going to make them cheaper. All the plants that I'm aware of cannot run commercially when capital costs are allowed for, and were mostly built as technology demonstrators.

        1. David Pollard

          @ledswinger

          CHP boilers don't use the 8% waste heat from boilers. They generate electricity directly from the fuel, then the leftover energy from the heat engine is used for heating; the electricity is is more 'valuable' than heat. Typically the thermal efficiency of the grid is around 40% so electricity is worth 2.5 times as much as heat.

          A really good CHP generator will provide maybe 30% of its output as electricity, the rest is supplied as useful heat and a bit of waste. Assuming that the waste is the same at 8%, it would provide 62% of input energy as heat and 30% as electricity which is 'worth' 75%, thus giving an equivalent combined output of 137% rather than 92%.

          Similar sums suggest that there might be something to be gained from heating houses using nuclear electricity with a heat pump.

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: @ledswinger

            "CHP boilers don't use the 8% waste heat from boilers. "

            I do know that, I work in the energy business. I think my language could have been clearer that I'm looking at net thermodynamic efficiency. If your primary alternative (a condensing gas boiler) extracts 92% of the energy from fuel, to be viable micro CHP must involve higher net efficiency, and I'm unconvinced that there's micro-CHP offering better than that, and it has (IME) much higher capital costs, higher maintenance costs, shorter asset lives, and sometimes other downsides like noise and vibration. In the world of large scale custom-designed, professionally operated heating systems you can't economically run heat-led CHP for much above system baseload for similar reasons, so the idea that micro-CHP will be magically more efficient than 92% is a chimera, and that's because any advance on a gas boiler has only that 8% efficiency gap to close.

            1. Tim Worstal

              Re: @ledswinger

              "extracts 92% of the energy from fuel,"

              Ah. no.

              That's fine if we are looking at fuel as the scarce resourse. For coal, nuclear, gas, we are. But for solar, given insolation, we've not got a shortage of the primary fuel. We've a cost issue, sure. But if we can (an asumption rather made) get cheap solar then eficiency isn't all that important.

              Yes, sure, greater eff is better. But if we can get all the W we want at 3 cents a W, then so what?

            2. Al 18

              Re: @ledswinger

              You have missed the point. CHP does not need to be more efficient that a heating boiler, it only needs to be more efficient than the alternative electrical generating/distribution system plus a separate heating system.

              e.g. in separate systems:

              1 unit in x 40% = .4 units out (elec)

              1 unit in x 92% = .92 units out (heat)

              in combined system

              2 units in x say 30% = .6 units out (elec)

              plus 2 units x 70% x say 80% = 1.12 unit out (heat)

              More heat and elec.

          2. Alan Brown Silver badge

            Re: @ledswinger

            "Similar sums suggest that there might be something to be gained from heating houses using nuclear electricity with a heat pump."

            In an epoch of higher gas prices, this would make more sense _and_ be signifiicantly less complex (AC systems are long lived and self contained, but micro-CHP Stirling engines need regular maintenance.)

        2. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          @ledswinger

          "There's a shed-load of micro-generation schemes like this... and I've seen nothing that convinces me that Tim Worstall's ideas are coming true any time soon"

          Does this include the nickel-molybdenum-nitride catalyst that splits water?

    4. Primus Secundus Tertius

      How much power?

      A car going on an uphill stretch of motorway uses some 50 kilowatts of power.

      The energy of sunlight is about 1 kilowatt per square metre, and about a tenth of that can be turned into electricity by solar cells.

      So the car above, if electric, would need 500 square metres of solar sail. Bit of wind resistance there, one feels, plus problems at night. Worstall's hydrogen cells are unlikely to be significantly better.

      Chemical energy is far more concentrated than electrical or mechanical energy. That is why we can make bombs, dammit. There is no sensible substitute for petrol.

      And as most of the world's carbon dioxide comes from volcanoes under the ocean, our use of petrol makes no significant difference.

      1. Nuffnuff

        Re: How much power?

        Yeh nah

        http://www.skepticalscience.com/volcanoes-and-global-warming.htm

      2. Alan Brown Silver badge

        Re: How much power?

        "And as most of the world's carbon dioxide comes from volcanoes under the ocean, our use of petrol makes no significant difference."

        Natural sources of carbon dioxide are fairly outmatched by natural sinks of carbon dioxide.

        A good chunk of the anthrogenic CO2 is also taken up by natural CO2 sinks and those natural sinks were able to keep up until the industrial revolution really got into high gear.

        The problem is that man-made CO2 production is well above the level which natural sinks can absorb, so levels are climbing.

        Man-made CO2 emissions account for less than 10% of all CO2 emissions on the planet and volcanoes are a tiny fraction of that, as someone else has already pointed out.

        http://www.skepticalscience.com/human-co2-smaller-than-natural-emissions-intermediate.htm

        The issue isn't the level of emissions, it's the DIFFERENCE between total emissions and total absorption.

        One analogy is filling a water tank with the drain valve open - If your inflow rate can exceed the outflow rate, you'll overfill the tank eventually (or make it so heavy that the structure supporting it will collapse.)

        You can achieve that endpoint by increasing the inflow rate (fossil fuel burning), pinching off the outflow rate (chopping down forests, etc) or a combination of the two.

      3. JeffyPoooh
        Pint

        Re: How much power?

        "A car going on an uphill stretch of motorway uses some 50 kilowatts of power."

        I see what you've done there. Mixing peak into a discussion of solar. As if energy storage did not exist.

        It's still impractical as you conclude; I'm just pointing out a misstep in the argument.

    5. Martin Budden Silver badge

      it is difficult to store and distribute

      I am storing lots of hydrogen in my body right now. I distributed some onto the lemon tree this morning.

      The difficult bit is preventing hydrogen from getting too cosy with other atoms (until you want it to).

  3. juice

    The problem with this article...

    Is that we don't just use fossil fuels for energy. Aside the the obvious uses (plastics, fertilizer), any industry which uses chemicals (pharmaceutical, cosmetics, etc) need them...

    Cracking the energy issue is a start. But it's by no means the full picture.

    1. mike2R

      Re: The problem with this article...

      Do those sort of uses actually increase the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere? I'd have thought making some plastic product, and having your customers chuck it in a landfill, would count as carbon capture.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: The problem with this article...

        Cheap 'alternative' energy somewhat disconnects the energy market (and its CO2 effects) from oil as an energy source.

        I guess juice's main point is this:

        Oil is also a large-scale raw material for industry (cheap plastics come from cheap oil) and for intensive agriculture (cheap fertiliser comes from cheap oil).

        Energy sources from something other than fossil fuels are very welcome. But some significant quantity of fossil fuels are used for stuff other than 'just' energy.

        1. Tim Worstal

          Re: The problem with this article...

          "cheap fertiliser comes from cheap oil"

          Not really. You make fertiliser from natural gas (Haber Process).

          But cheap fossil fuels, yes.

          1. Dave 126 Silver badge

            Re: The problem with this article...

            >Oil is cheap because it is pulled out of the ground in enormous scale.... but the minute you massively reduce the scale, the per unit costs go up.

            Could you expand upon that? My assumption would have been that 1000 oil rigs can produce oil at much the same unit cost as 2000 rigs. For sure, if you did it suddenly there would be the extra costs of making redundancy payments to staff, or employing a caretaker staff on 'mothballed' rigs... but if you simply drilled fewer new wells over time, I'm not clear on why the unit cost would rise much.

            Cheers

            1. Desk Jockey

              Re: The problem with this article...

              You shouldn't be thinking about the existing rigs. Those are sunk costs so in that respect, reducing demand would not increase the price. The issue comes with finding more oil fields and moving or building more rigs. This is very expensive and justified by the fact that the companies will get a huge quantity of oil, thus making the costs of getting new sources of oil worth it and thus spreading out that huge initial cost. Reduce the demand and that initial investment has to be paid back sooner as the business case for taking a decade or two to recoup the cost is not as strong as it was.

              Other factors include logistics. Oil is transported in massive supertankers because you get economy of scale benefits even though those tankers can be pretty expensive to build and run. Double the size of a normal big tanker, but not double the costs sort of thing. Now there is less demand, so the operators fill the super tankers up (not worth ordering the smaller ones until the super tanker has to be replaced), but instead of doing 1 or 2 stops to unload, it now does 5 stops to 5 different ports. Every time you go into a port you pay fees, plus that super tanker had to travel more, pay crews to be out for longer etc. That increased cost comes right back into the oil price.

              This does not take into account any tax or subsidy changes that might result from governments believing oil is no longer as important as it was. Tim Worstall might be able to explain it in something smaller than a full blown thesis, but right now I don't have enough background knowledge to cover what is a very complex area.

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