Gulf Coast refinery damage reports seem ominous, with a story in the Washington Post, for example, Rita's Damage to Refineries Limited, quoting one expert as saying, '"We didn't dodge a bullet with Rita, we took a couple bullets in the legs with Katrina and Rita," said Tom Kloza, an analyst with the Oil Price Information Service of Wall, N.J. "It's still a significant loss, and it's going to create some supply problems through at least mid-October."' A Reuters piece, Storms Destroyed 108 Offshore Platforms, leads with, "A total of 108 low producing oil and natural gas offshore platforms were destroyed by hurricanes Rita and Katrina and some of the other 53 heavily damaged platforms could be offline until next year, the U.S. Interior Department said on Tuesday."

Best case, the platforms with minor damage will take weeks to repair, with others requiring years of work. According to the Washington Post article, 'Early estimates were that Hurricane Rita will cost U.S. refiners about 800,000 barrels a day in oil refining capacity, on top of about 900,000 barrels a day still down due to Katrina.'

A host of factors, including Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, have once again slammed the nation back to the issue of U.S. dependence on Middle Eastern crude. We've recently touched upon this issue in articles here on the Industrial Market Trends blog, including Is There Hope Beyond Fossil Fuels? and Will Katrina, Rita, and Shell Oil Revive Oil Shale Possibilities?

While I hate to source USA Today, it actually published what appears to be a reasonable article on the subject, headlined Before the Oil Runs Out: The Search for Alternatives. (Perhaps the article strikes me as credible because the writer is from the Christian Science Monitor instead of USA Today.)

It starts off with an interesting history lesson describing how the Germans during WWII faced their oil shortage: with coal. 'Operating 25 synthetic fuel plants, Germans converted their country's brown coal into high-quality diesel fuel and gasoline. Coal provided over 92 percent of Germany's aviation fuel and half of all its petroleum needs.'

The article continues, "What worked in wartime Germany could hold lessons for the United States. With only two percent of the world's proven oil reserves all but teeming with coal, the U.S. could turn its carbon bounty into synthetic fuels. If they're cheap enough, synfuels could power America's autos, trucks, trains, tractors, and aircraft far into the future and cut the nation's reliance on Middle East oil. The U.S. already relies on coal, natural gas, hydropower, and even windmills to heat and provide electricity for homes, offices, and factories. But for transportation — a linchpin of modern economies and national security — synfuels from coal, tar sands, and other ancient fossil deposits represent one of the few alternatives to oil."

That's all well and good but, unfortunately, "synfuels" don't appear to be in a position to replace gasoline anytime soon — though coal-based fuels can, in fact, quickly replace diesel fuel. Interestingly, Gov. Ed Rendell of my home state of Pennsylvania is not only talking about this possibility but is making it a reality — first for PA then, with any luck, a growing number of states throughout the country. From the PA State Web page: "The Governor announced the creation of a fuel consortium that will purchase nearly the full output of cheaper, cleaner diesel fuel to be produced by the nation's first-ever waste-coal-to-diesel plant planned for Mahanoy City, Schuylkill County. The plant, which is being built by Waste Management and Processors Inc. (WMPI) of Gilberton, Schuylkill County, will use waste coal to produce as much as 40 million gallons of clean-burning diesel annually."

Seems reasonable.

Easing further outside of transportation, solar and wind power generation are perceived as viable, renewable alternatives. Are they, really?

An excellent (and free) online book called The Nuclear Energy Option, by Bernard L. Cohen, Professor Emeritus, University of Pittsburgh, discusses — in both general and specifically referenced terms — a wide variety of energy options. Regarding photovoltaic solar in the common form of a fixed, flat plate. He says, "If these trends continue — i.e., if every five years the efficiency improves by two percent, the cost is cut in half, and the life expectancy is increased by five years — photovoltaics will penetrate the utility market by the end of the century." Um, while impressive, I don't think we have that much time.

Hey, what about wind? Cohen paints what strikes me as a bleak picture for wind turbines. "It would take 50,000 wind turbines of the type being used in California to replace the average electricity produced by a single nuclear or coal-burning plant, which is hardly an inviting prospect for an electrical utility. Management costs would be horrendous. Important efforts are, therefore, being made to develop larger systems. The largest to date is a 3,200 kW, 320-foot in diameter turbine at Kahuku, Hawaii. Conditions in Hawaii are especially well suited for use of wind; moreover, coal or oil must be imported from long distances, making them expensive. A blade the length of a football field mounted on a tower and turning in the wind is a relatively major installation, but it would still take a thousand of these to produce the average electricity generated by a single nuclear or coal-burning plant."

In a Bizarro World twist, it seems that tree huggers have turned against clean, pollution-free wind power, protesting not only the aesthetics of wind farms, but the turbine blades' propensity to chop flying creatures into itty-bitty bird and bat bits. You just can't keep some people happy. (Couldn't we put shrouds around the blades as is done on electric fans around the house?)

With countless nuclear power plants safely in service around the world, nuclear seems to be the most viable energy option. (Yes, I remember Chernobyl. See Cohen's Chap. 7 for a scholarly take on that.) There is that small matter of waste disposal, however. Look to a future blog article focusing on the nuclear issue.

Clearly, no Middle East option is without its own set of problems and considerations, and nuclear poses potentially great threats which, statistically, simply haven't happened due to stringent safety measures, especially here in the U.S. and Canada.

But I'm just an inquisitive hack. You're the engineers. What do you think?

Resources

Conflicting: Storms Destroyed 108 Offshore Platforms
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20051004/bs_nm/hurricanes_energy_interior_dc

Rita's Damage to Refineries Limited
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/26/AR2005092601184.html

Before the Oil Runs Out: The Search for Alternatives
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/discoveries/2005-09-25-oil-alternatives_x.htm

Governor Rendell Leads With Innovative Solution to Help Address PA Energy Needs; Reduces Dependence On Foreign Supplies
http://www.state.pa.us/papower/cwp/view.asp?Q=446127&A=11

The Nuclear Energy Option
http://www.phyast.pitt.edu/~blc/book/BOOK.html

Environmentalists Rally Against West Virginia, New York Wind Farms
http://www.heartland.org/Article.cfm?artId=16383