Oil Shortage in Australia

[ricktas]

A lot of folks can't understand how we came

to have an oil shortage here in Australia.

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Well, there's a very simple answer.

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Nobody bothered to check the oil.

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We just didn't know we were getting low.

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The reason for that is purely geographical.

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Our OIL is located in

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Bass Strait

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East Queensland Shale Fields

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Canning Basin

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Perth Basin

and

North-West Continental Shelf

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Our DIPSTICKS are located in Canberra!!!



Any questions???

[mrDooba]

hehe :)

[Coral]

Haha Yep so true............

[Hawthy]

Dipstick is a diplomatic term.........

[Shelley]

he he - funnnnnny

[OzzieTraveller]

Aaaahhhh Ricki

As a Canberra -ite for many years ...

Y E S --- the Dipstix are in Canberra but you sent them there from your home towns....... !


Regards, Phil

[ameerat42]

But the fundamental thing applies... lah-lah-lah
...to all politicians...
"Try to please all and you will please none."
An adage from the tale "The man, the boy, and the donkey."
A(he)m.

[Bennymiata]

So true, so true.

Do you know why we don't have any good politicians in Canberra?

Because all the GOOD politicians are too busy taking photos and getting on this forum!

[exwintech]

Why are our Wise, Great and Noble (?) Leaders not pushing the use of CNG in private as well as fleet vehicles?

Yes, we do have LPG being used in Taxis and some private vehicles. But LPG is a Petroleum by-product - so obviously lasts only as long as the oil does.

Natural Gas we have in such vast quantities that we are shipping it at very low prices to Asia in a fleet of the largest LNG Tankers in the World - and even at that rate, there are claims that it will - with the known fields yet untapped - last over 150 years.

Customers overseas are getting huge quantities of Australian Natural Gas so cheaply that they are running power-stations on it. While of course - in Australia we have the more polluting coal-fired power stations.

If we have a petroleum shortage - and we are importing much of our petrol and diesel engine fuel - why are we not using our own Natural Gas?

Engines running CNG are relatively low-polluting, the engine lubricating oil and filters last longer between changes - and in using it we wouldn't be importing fuel from elsewhere.

Existing diesel engines can use Natural Gas in combination with diesel fuel - considerably reducing diesel emissions, or if so designed, can use it directly, with very great reductions in emissions.

Car makers can design Natural Gas engines for private cars, also utes and vans for private as well as commercial use. While these might cost a little more to buy - surely the Governments - Federal and State - could give purchasers of Natural Gas fuelled vehicles similar incentives to those the buyers of electric or hybrid cars are offered in many parts of the World.

While it might take 10 or 20 years to change the great majority of private vehicles to Natural Gas - such planning on the part of our Great - hopefully - Leaders, would ensure that the later generations will have suitable vehicles and the fuel to run them on, far into the future.

Yes - once we get into production with safe Thorium-Cycle reactors - we might then have the vast amounts of cheap electricity to run a national fleet of electric vehicles - with by then, the 1,000km range storage units per vehicle that are needed to be practical in a country with our great distances - but that technology and development level is a generation or more away...

Meanwhile - until then, we have very large supplies of Natural Gas, but at present we just seem to be "getting rid of it" as quickly and cheaply as possible...

Regards, Dave.

[ameerat42]

O-o-ohh! So that's what CNG (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compressed_natural_gas) means!:Doh:

[Boo53]

Why are our Wise, Great and Noble (?) Leaders not pushing the use of CNG in private as well as fleet vehicles?




Big Snip-----------------

Regards, Dave.



Dave, CNG and LPG are very different gases. As I understand it LPG liquifies at much lower pressures than CNG and the pressure vessels needed to store CNG are incredibly heavy, only suitable for the likes of Buses, etc; that can cope with the weight, but still need refilling fairly often

[exwintech]

Boo53 - I'm well aware that Liquified Petroleum Gas and Natural Gas are different substances. The former - as I did note - is a by-product of Petroleum - "Oil". Natural Gas is not - it is drilled for and accessed as a gas.

Check my post above - when I refer to Natural Gas being used in land vehicles to propel said vehicles - I said "CNG" - as in "Compressed Natural Gas". This is the substance in a gaseous form - which is then not at extreme high pressure - and the containment cylinders/vessels do not need cryostabilisation - cooling to maintain the stability of a liquified gas at very high pressure.

However - when very large quanties of Natural Gas are to be bulk-transported - this can be by ship or rail, though shipping is very much more cost-effective - the substance is liquified at very high pressure, this requiring extremely strong and heavy containment vessels (tanks.) For this purpose the exports from Australia use specialised shipping tankers.

When Natural Gas is compressed to a liquid form, it is called "LNG" - Liquified Natural Gas. I thought I had described that difference in the state of the substance, when I wrote above, "...we are shipping it at very low prices to Asia in a fleet of the largest LNG Tankers in the World ...."

Dave.

[mikew09]

Good one Rick - I will be taking that one to work tomorrow for the lads.

[Scotty72]

I think the world needs to get used to the fact that we have passed peak oil, and the stuff is gonna get very expensive ...

[peterb666]

Sure Scotty, but we will never run short of dipsticks in Canberra. Well not at least when parliament is sitting.

[Kym]

Why are our Wise, Great and Noble (?) Leaders not pushing the use of CNG in private as well as fleet vehicles? ...

Why not also move ALL interstate freight onto rail, because its cheaper and uses 1/5 (20%) of the fuel to move a tonne of freight interstate DOOR to DOOR!!
Plus no more heavy transport impact on roads and drugged up interstate truckies.

(BTW Why not? vested interests in the transport industry)

[kiwi]

Why not also move ALL interstate freight onto rail, because its cheaper and uses 1/5 (20%) of the fuel to move a tonne of freight interstate DOOR to DOOR!!
Plus no more heavy transport impact on roads and drugged up interstate truckies.

(BTW Why not? vested interests in the transport industry)

Can you explain this in more detail, who any why is there a vested interest ?

[Kym]

Can you explain this in more detail, who any why is there a vested interest ?

Quite simply, if you replace interstate heavy transport with containers on trains,
and factor in the local pick up and delivery at each end on trucks,
then you use 20% of the fuel vs double B's travelling around the country.

Currently rail is cheaper but slower.
The slowness due to inefficient handing at the depots, not rail per se.

http://www.artc.com.au/Article/Detail.aspx?p=6&np=4&id=265
2010 National Press Club


Vested interests? Not without getting into legal problems. :eek:

[exwintech]

Kym - Before I had a shoulder injury and could no longer do heavy lifting, which is why I then became a computer tech, I spent 24 years in the transport industry as a truck driver, but also with heavy forklift and related certs. Not quite 16 years of that time was spent on the interstate, much of it Sydney-Melbourne, but also Brisbane, Adelaide, and inland at times. I also did local container work in Sydney for several years.

I agree with you that heavy freight on rail is vastly more energy/pollution/wear efficient than on road transport. So does the largest road-freight company in Australia - for many years they have been increasing their freight-rail operations between main cities and the inland freight hubs. That's not only more profitable for them - but has the other benefits you mention.

Freight businesses would be delighted to shift more and more of their cargo to rail, for these reasons. But there are still downsides to freight-rail - some, such as speed, have been mentioned. Also, here, we don't yet have the high-speed freight-rail that some countries enjoy - though both Federal and State Govts are "working on that" - just not soon enough, or enough of it.

There's also the "triple-handling" problem - rail in this country rarely goes "point of origin/farm/factory to point of destination - customer/processer/exporter." That means "local" trucks are still needed at each end of the rail journey. The smallest usable truck for 6m (20ft) containers has to have pins and the structure to be able to carry those legally - can be a rigid vehicle per 6m box, or semis can - if combined weight allows, carry two. 12m (40ft) boxes require a semi, of course.

So while the container's trip from Sydney to Adelaide, say - is fairly efficient on current rail (but could be much better) - the secondary road transport infrastructure has to exist at both ends of that trip - container forks and suitable trucks, and the employee structure to operate those.

Which is why, with some types of freight - perishables, time-critical loads, delicate products (electronics, etc) - it can still be better to load 1 truck, 1 time, and have 1 driver - take it from point of loading to point of delivery.

In the EU, they're now using special compartmentalised rail units to carry sealed pallets ( a bit similar to closed airfreight pallets) for these cargos - using very fast trains. This minimises containerising - allows auto-transfer - and allows smaller and more economical trucks to be used in the secondary transport level. But here, we are a long way from that, yet.

Dave.

[Scotty72]

I don't think it is a great secret that the energy sector is a massive lobby group in this and most countries. Remember the mining tax backlash.

It is not hard to imagine a far greater backlash if govt proposed policies / infrastructure that threatened to reduce the demand for oil and therefore the profits of the energy sector.

Then there are all the industries that are related to this.

Scotty

[geoffsta]

@ exwintech. Your comment: There's also the "triple-handling" problem - rail in this country rarely goes "point of origin/farm/factory to point of destination - customer/processer/exporter." That means "local" trucks are still needed at each end of the rail journey. The smallest usable truck for 6m (20ft) containers has to have pins and the structure to be able to carry those legally - can be a rigid vehicle per 6m box, or semis can - if combined weight allows, carry two. 12m (40ft) boxes require a semi, of course.
Is not really true.
Most transport companies deliver to depots. From there the cargo is the delivered to the customer by a smaller vehicle.
Years ago when I was young, we lived near a rail depot. Many big companies built their factories around the rail depot. This was good because it kept factories to a certain area. Now days factories are built everywhere with big trucks driving through highly populated areas. A push back to rail transport would be a good thing all round.

@ Ozzie Traveller.
Y E S --- the Dipstix are in Canberra but you sent them there from your home towns....... !
We like to send all our dipsticks to Canberra to keep them all in one place. Better to shovel one load of Bulls**t than many smaller loads. Saves oil and oil related products:D

[Scotty72]

Good point about trucks also needing multiple handling.

The B-Doubles that thunder up and down the national highway don't pop by the local grocery store along the way.

They also have to go to regional depots and presumably, goods them are transferred to a local distribution network.

Of course rail can't do everything but, perhaps some balance can be restored.