So the ban on mining will be lifted in 2048, do anyone know if oil companies are testdrilling nowadays on the frozen continent to find out where to start drilling if they´re allowed?
I wonder if price to produce and ship oil from the frozen continent are greater than deepsea drilling?

I very much hope that we are not using oil by 2048.

Quoting Alessandro (Thread starter): I wonder if price to produce and ship oil from the frozen continent are greater than deepsea drilling?

You can almost bet that it is significantly higher. Drilling equipment needs to be freeze proof. The work that oil companies are doing in the Arctic will probably be in some way transferred to antartica. Transportation is another issue as there's not really anywhere to build a port and an oil pipeline, unless it goes to South America, is likely to be un-viable.

Quoting DocLightning (Reply 1): I very much hope that we are not using oil by 2048.

We will be. There simply is no other energy source, easily transportable, easily storable in liquid form at room temperature available, which is especially important for air travel.

Quoting Bill142 (Reply 2): You can almost bet that it is significantly higher. Drilling equipment needs to be freeze proof.

But that is nothing new. We've been drilling in Alaska and the Russians have been drilling in Siberia for many decades now. We know how to do it.

Quoting Dreadnought (Reply 3): Quoting DocLightning (Reply 1): I very much hope that we are not using oil by 2048. We will be. There simply is no other energy source, easily transportable, easily storable in liquid form at room temperature available, which is especially important for air travel.

I'm sorry, but there is (or rather will be one would imagine) by then in the form of nuclear fusion. Nuclear fusion does exist in nature, and man-made (both controlled and uncontrolled). The problem is that so far it has been to difficult and expensive to get it working as an electricity source. The fundamentals of fusion are relatively simple... it is the process of implementing them that is the complex part.

Needless to say cars etc will be electric. Ultra high speed travel devices based on things like MAGLEV (which use large amounts of electricity) will transport people over shorter/medium distances. Long haul travel will be much faster as suborbital aircraft could be either piggybacked on fusion/electric powered lifter aircraft. Travelling at speeds around Mach 8+ trips from say LHR to SYD would take 3 hours insted of 23!
If needed synthetic oils could be produced from methods using abundant, clean and cheap electricity generate by fusion reactors.

Lots of possibilities... greatly reduced CO2 emissions, giant CO2 scrubbing plants, engineering and producing ultralight and strong materials for construction etc using techniques that at present simply use to much electricity and aren't a practical consideration at the moment.

Thats what I see in the future provided the planet isn't screwed up by global warming, overpopulation, or terrorism.

Quoting Dreadnought (Reply 3): We will be. There simply is no other energy source, easily transportable, easily storable in liquid form at room temperature available, which is especially important for air travel.

Ever heard of:

Liquefied natural gas ( LNG )

and

Liquefied petroleum gas ( LPG )


You can read about Norway's " Snøhvit " Natural Gas field in the Barents here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sn%C3%B8hvit

The annual export capacity will be 5.75 bcm of LNG, 747,000t of condensate and 247,000t of LPG. The long-term export contracts are signed with Iberdrola in Spain and El Paso in the USA.


Not sure if you can use it to fuel planes though. Maybe just cars ? But it will perhaps be possible for planes in the future ?

Quoting Mortyman (Reply 5): Not sure if you can use it to fuel planes though

Perhaps not with any real practicality but the emerging gas to oil technologies could change that.

Cheers

Zkpilot, 40 years isn´t that long away, surely lot of 40 years old cars around today.
I doubt also the rest of the technology you mentioned, 35 years since last manned moontrip,
5 years since the Concorde, no I don´t think there´s large leaps in technology making oil worthless in 4 decades.

Quoting Dreadnought (Reply 3): Quoting DocLightning (Reply 1): I very much hope that we are not using oil by 2048. We will be

I agree that oil will still be widely used in 40 years, but most likely not crude oil out of the ground but rather synthetic oil or oil from algae. I trust by then these are cheaper to generate than drilling oil at ever remoter places.

Quoting Zkpilot (Reply 4): Long haul travel will be much faster as suborbital aircraft could be either piggybacked on fusion/electric powered lifter aircraft. Travelling at speeds around Mach 8+ trips from say LHR to SYD would take 3 hours insted of 23!

I think you have your head in the clouds. We recently had the 50th anniversary of commercial transatlantic flights, and remind me how much faster it is today than it was back in 1958?

Quoting Zkpilot (Reply 4): global warming, overpopulation,

Why the need to include both? The only realistic reason for any human caused global warming is the rapid growth in world population. And if it is human caused (which is doubtful), the only way you're going to prevent it is by killing off 5 billion people and going back to how we lived in 1850.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but in order to have oil you at one time millions of years ago have had life. Antarctica has never had that....even before the plate shift.

Quoting Alessandro (Reply 7): Zkpilot, 40 years isn´t that long away, surely lot of 40 years old cars around today. I doubt also the rest of the technology you mentioned, 35 years since last manned moontrip, 5 years since the Concorde, no I don´t think there´s large leaps in technology making oil worthless in 4 decades.

Technology has progressed, except that everything nowadays is about "profits" instead of achievements, so in reality we have regressed. Many technologies are still not implemented because we are still debating whether it's feasible or profitable enough..It's like refineries, now supposedly we are afraid to build more because, we're not sure if in the future we might stop using oil... Europe is leading the US right now in successfully implementing alternate energy, like solar.

I have a theory that oil is a substance the earth produces in abundant quantities, instead of being the rapidly depleting product of ancient forests and fossils like we have been lead to believe. We just need to find new places where it's available in large quantities closest to the surface.

Quoting Dreadnought (Reply 3): We will be. There simply is no other energy source, easily transportable, easily storable in liquid form at room temperature available, which is especially important for air travel.

It is possible to make synthetic oil. All you need is energy. Nuclear power for example.

Quoting EMBQA (Reply 9): Correct me if I'm wrong, but in order to have oil you at one time millions of years ago have had life. Antarctica has never had that....even before the plate shift.

Afraid that is not so. Forgive me if I cannot be bothered to go back downstairs and unearth some of my photographs of Antarctic coals, but it certainly had plenty of complex life at various times. In any case producing some pics of Tasmanian Permian or the S African Permian coals from the Karroo would be just as good, difficult to tell them apart saving a detailed study of the spores pollen assemblages present.

However, the sections best exposed are of Permian and Triassic sections very similar in many ways to those seen in Tasmania and the Karroo. Similar to those sections, there are thick doleritic sills within the section which pretty much detroys oil potential where they are prominent.

There would be potential for coal bed methane, but the history of oil recovery from these sections is not encouraging (or wonderful depending on whether you want oil production from the Antarctic). However there are similarities with the Cooper Basin in Australia which had about 40 or 50 small oil fields in the Permian - there are more in the overlying basin.

Not much is known about some of the basins that are covered in km of ice and it would be unwise to dismiss their potential, just as it would be unwise to assume that it would be technologically feasible to recover any oil or even to drill.

One systemic problem would be that the ice base temperatures are (obviously) close to zero C. Most oils have pour points well above zero - that is below zero they will not flow (they are rheids for the most part). If the geothermal gradient is crustal average, you might need to be at least a km below ice base before any oil present would flow.

The main concern is the possible potential of the sections on the surrounding continental shelf. These likely are similar in many ways to the rift basins along the S margin of the Australian continent. The major oil basin in those rift basins depends on a thick Cretaceous to Middle Tertiary coal measures section which has not been recognised to date on its counterpart margin.

Quoting Dreadnought (Reply 3): We will be. There simply is no other energy source, easily transportable, easily storable in liquid form at room temperature available, which is especially important for air travel.

Then you better start lobbying for cars that give you 80 to 100 kilometers per liter or 200 miles a gallon, because with the millions of new drivers in Asia, Latin America and India, there will be no oil left 10 years before that.

Quoting Alessandro (Reply 7): Zkpilot, 40 years isn´t that long away, surely lot of 40 years old cars around today. I doubt also the rest of the technology you mentioned, 35 years since last manned moontrip, 5 years since the Concorde, no I don´t think there´s large leaps in technology making oil worthless in 4 decades.

We went pretty quickly from propeller aircraft to concorde, the problem with concorde was that it was too small, used too much fuel and was produced in too small a number, not to mention the noise factor...
HST has been talked about for a long time as a replacement to the concorde, with half-hearted attempts by the USA and Japan in the 80's. With the advent of newer technology over the past 20 years (many of which are being implemented now... a-la A380, 787) aircraft can become lighter and stronger. Heat is the big factor in HST. Serious efforts have however been made over the past 2 or so years and proposals along the lines I suggested of long-range HST flights could be a reality in a moderate time frame of 15 years. A rush/race could have it ready in as little as 8, or lack of interest and cost barriers could push it out to 20-25 years. The thing about these proposals (using fuels I might add) is that upon reaching economies of scale have time savings of about 80% for only a slight increase in consumption...however that aircraft can be utilised for 3 return SYD-LHR flights whilst a conventional 744/A380 can fly one-way once per day. Thats before even considering how nuclear fusion will change the economics of the future (ie the possiblity of using a maglev catapault to launch aircraft or a mothership booster type aircraft).

Quoting Planesarecool (Reply 10): Quoting Zkpilot (Reply 4): global warming, overpopulation, Why the need to include both? The only realistic reason for any human caused global warming is the rapid growth in world population. And if it is human caused (which is doubtful), the only way you're going to prevent it is by killing off 5 billion people and going back to how we lived in 1850.

Well it is true that the world is over populated, particularly in many countries/regions that don't have the right natural means to support those populations (ie desert regions etc).
The thing about nuclear fusion is that it provides almost limitless power that is clean, abundant, and cheap. It means that electricity can be used for all sorts of things that previously would not be feasible. CO2 scrubbing plants could quickly and cheaply remove CO2 from the atmosphere, crops could be grown with light 24/7 since electricity would be almost free. Dry areas of land (the Sahara, Australia, Middle East, Inland Asia etc) could be irrigated with fresh water (produced by de-salination plants that would run on the clean and almost free electricity from fusion reactors). It is still just an idea, but the idea of putting someone on the moon, or cellphones were just an idea at one time too! The difference being that we know that Fusion exists, we have made fusion reactions, it is simply a case of developing controlled fusion.

Quoting Zkpilot (Reply 15): The thing about nuclear fusion is that it provides almost limitless power that is clean, abundant, and cheap.

The three things about nuclear fusion is that it is yet to produce any useful power, there is no reason at all to suppose it will be cheap, and why should it be clean when the as the reactants react they are surrounded by a high radiation flux (up to 100 times that of a fission reactor) that will irradiate the reaction vessel far more thoroughly than any fission reactor vessel.

For a summary of the current state of "development = experimentation" and some of the problems:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusion_power

Laser methods may offer some advantages but "the program has many of the same problems as the tokamak; practical methods of energy removal and tritium recycling need to be demonstrated".

And there are plenty of more negative assessments around.

How DO you get the energy out without melting the system? It proved a problem for MHD 40 years ago, and no way around it has been found AFAIK. Delighted to hear if there is a way to get efficient cheap energy transfer but I will not hold my breath.

This just in - Antarctica, the 51st state to be renamed "South Alaska"

Quoting Zkpilot (Reply 4): Ultra high speed travel devices based on things like MAGLEV (which use large amounts of electricity) will transport people over shorter/medium distances.

I can see it taking 40 years to work out the rights of way unless they tear up existing track to make way for it. Then you have to account for earthquakes, floods, mountains, etc. Do any maglev trains pass over any mountains now? Most of the film footage I have seen shows they are built on fairly level ground.

Quoting Zkpilot (Reply 4): Long haul travel will be much faster as suborbital aircraft could be either piggybacked on fusion/electric powered lifter aircraft. Travelling at speeds around Mach 8+ trips from say LHR to SYD would take 3 hours insted of 23!

Two names to remember before you start selling tickets, Challenger, and Columbia. Technology will have to make some serious leaps before this method of travel becomes financially feasible.

Quoting RL757PVD (Reply 17): This just in - Antarctica, the 51st state to be renamed "South Alaska"

Does that mean you can see it from Russia? That could be a problem - for us and the Kiwis!!   

Quoting Derico (Reply 14): Then you better start lobbying for cars that give you 80 to 100 kilometers per liter or 200 miles a gallon, because with the millions of new drivers in Asia, Latin America and India, there will be no oil left 10 years before that.

It´s called Suzuki Twin hybrid.

Quoting Baroque (Reply 19): RL757PVD (Reply 17): This just in - Antarctica, the 51st state to be renamed "South Alaska" Does that mean you can see it from Russia? That could be a problem - for us and the Kiwis!!

South Yakutia in that case.

Quoting MIAMIx707 (Reply 11): Technology has progressed, except that everything nowadays is about "profits" instead of achievements, so in reality we have regressed. Many technologies are still not implemented because we are still debating whether it's feasible or profitable enough..It's like refineries, now supposedly we are afraid to build more because, we're not sure if in the future we might stop using oil... Europe is leading the US right now in successfully implementing alternate energy, like solar. I have a theory that oil is a substance the earth produces in abundant quantities, instead of being the rapidly depleting product of ancient forests and fossils like we have been lead to believe. We just need to find new places where it's available in large quantities closest to the surface.

Perhaps due to the fact that democratic countries are more common nowadays in the industrial world, if the living standard isn´t raised, you´re vote out of office, won´t happen
in a socialist dictatorship.

Quoting Zkpilot (Reply 4): I'm sorry, but there is (or rather will be one would imagine) by then in the form of nuclear fusion. Nuclear fusion does exist in nature, and man-made (both controlled and uncontrolled). The problem is that so far it has been to difficult and expensive to get it working as an electricity source. The fundamentals of fusion are relatively simple... it is the process of implementing them that is the complex part.

You are talking to a 100% fusion backer. But putting reactors in an airplane? It's already been tried:



This plane, a converted B-36, flew 47 test flights with a fully functioning nuclear reactor on board - not used for propulsion, however. A later version was scheduled to fly with specially designed GE nuclear jet engines which used the reactor core as the heat source rather than burning kerosene.

But the program was cancelled when someone realized the immense damage caused if such a plane crashed anywhere near a populated area.

Quoting Mortyman (Reply 5): Quoting Dreadnought (Reply 3): We will be. There simply is no other energy source, easily transportable, easily storable in liquid form at room temperature available, which is especially important for air travel. Ever heard of: Liquefied natural gas ( LNG ) and Liquefied petroleum gas ( LPG )

LPG has to be stored under pressure and/or superlow temperatures. You can't just pour it into a sheetmetal tank, like you can with gasoline or jet fuel, making it impractical for uses where weight is a big concern (eg aviation)

Quoting Zkpilot (Reply 4): I'm sorry, but there is (or rather will be one would imagine) by then in the form of nuclear fusion. Nuclear fusion does exist in nature, and man-made (both controlled and uncontrolled). The problem is that so far it has been to difficult and expensive to get it working as an electricity source. The fundamentals of fusion are relatively simple... it is the process of implementing them that is the complex part.

But fusion, while a boon for land-based energy needs, would not help aircraft, for reasons given above.

I'm a big Star Trek fan too, but I don't expect anti-gravity fields to be a realistic solution either.

Quoting EMBQA (Reply 9): Correct me if I'm wrong, but in order to have oil you at one time millions of years ago have had life. Antarctica has never had that....even before the plate shift.

Look it up. Antarctica is believed to have once been tropical.

Quoting Derico (Reply 14): Then you better start lobbying for cars that give you 80 to 100 kilometers per liter or 200 miles a gallon, because with the millions of new drivers in Asia, Latin America and India, there will be no oil left 10 years before that.

I agree with that.

Quoting StealthZ (Reply 6): Perhaps not with any real practicality but the emerging gas to oil technologies could change that.

You're not an investor in Firepower by any chance are you?