![]() It is thought that, in the early days of the oil industry ERoEI values were as high as 99, i.e., it took just 1 unit of energy to find and develop 100 units of gross energy. Therefore, oil companies are forced to spend an ever-increasing amount of energy simply finding and extracting new sources of energy to replace what has been used. With regard to crude oil, we have exploited the easy-to-find and easy-to-develop resources first. The Energy Returned on Energy Invested, ERoEI = 100/10 = 10 Gross Energy = 100 units, Energy Expended = 10 units and Net Energy = 90 units. Let’s further say that 10 units of energy are consumed in finding and developing the oil well in the first place, and then transporting and refining the crude. Let’s say that the crude oil that flows out of a well contains say 100 units of energy (Btus or kilojoules are commonly used units of measurement). Net Energy = (Gross Energy - Energy Expended)Īnother way of looking at the same concept is to consider the term ‘Energy Returned on Energy Invested’ or ERoEI. The energy in the produces provided to the customers is ‘net energy’. However, before that oil can be supplied to a customer it has to be transported to a refinery and turned into usable products such as gasoline, aviation fuel and feedstock for petrochemical plants. It is the total amount of energy that the oil can provide when burned. The crude oil that flows out of a well contains ‘gross energy’. In order to understand the economics of the oil business, it is necessary to distinguish between Gross Energy and Net Energy. It takes energy to find and utilize energy. The phrase, “It takes money to make money" is commonly used in the financial world. The oil industry has to run faster and faster to stay in the same place. For example, an offshore platform in deep water can cost hundreds of millions of dollars. The cost of finding and developing these sources is high. However, as the low-hanging fruit is plucked, an increasing fraction of the available energy has to be spent on finding and developing replacement sources. New oil sources are often at locations that are remote and that impose very difficult working conditions. The oil reservoir was close to the surface and had sufficient internal pressure to drive the oil as shown. The picture below shows a gusher from an oil well in near Spindletop in south-east Texas sometime around the year 1900. All that they had to do in those days was “stick a straw in the ground” and oil flowed. ![]() The Alice and Red Queen image of needing to run faster and faster to stay in the same place is a fine metaphor for the fossil fuel basis of our current lifestyles. In the early days of the oil industry not much energy was needed to find new sources and to replace what had been used. Energy Returned on Energy Invested (ERoEI) ‘Now, HERE, you see, it takes all the running YOU can do, to keep in the same place. ‘A slow sort of country!’ said the Queen. ![]() ![]() ‘Well, in OUR country,’ said Alice, still panting a little, ‘you’d generally get to somewhere else-if you ran very fast for a long time, as we’ve been doing.’ ‘Of course it is,’ said the Queen, ‘what would you have it?’ ‘Why, I do believe we’ve been under this tree the whole time! Everything’s just as it was!’ The Queen propped her up against a tree, and said kindly, ‘You may rest a little now.’Īlice looked round her in great surprise. just as Alice was getting quite exhausted, they stopped, and she found herself sitting on the ground, breathless and giddy. Suddenly they start running.Īlice never could quite make out, in thinking it over afterwards, how it was that they began: all she remembers is, that they were running hand in hand, and the Queen went so fast that it was all she could do to keep up with her: and still the Queen kept crying ‘Faster! Faster!’Īlice and the Queen run faster and faster until, In Lewis Carroll’s famous story Through the Looking-Glass the protagonist, Alice, meets the Red Queen. ![]()
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