Oil Refining 101 and Other Energy Stories
The Great Simplification #93 with Joris van der Schot
This week…
Today, I am pleased to be joined by energy industry professional Joris van der Schot to explain the basics of oil refineries, their limitations, and other cultural narratives about energy. Oil is the lifeblood of our economies, yet most of us know so little about how it actually becomes all the different final products that we use. By better understanding this process and the state of current refineries, we can see what options are available to us for future energy needs.
Joris van der Schot is a former Royal Dutch Shell executive with over a decade of international experience in the oil industry, where he held roles as a control systems engineer, corporate strategy advisor, refinery economist and lastly, Shell's global aviation gasoline supply manager. Joris left the oil industry and set out on a quest to accelerate the clean energy transition through breakthrough technologies. He currently works at French scale-up Energy Pool, providing storage and other flexibility services that enable the integration of renewable energy on the electricity grid.
Just how massive is the scale of our energy consumption? How flexible and resilient are oil refineries to shifting oil demand? Can we keep an open mind to realistic and helpful innovations while also grounding our preparations for the future in practical energy strategy ahead of The Great Simplification?
In case you missed it…
On Sunday, philosopher/writer Dougald Hine, social scientist/farmer Chris Smaje, and ecologist/farmer Pella Thiel joined me for a Reality Roundtable to discuss the future of food and community. Our disconnected relationship to agriculture and our neighbors have been shaped by a modern industrial society fueled by surplus hydrocarbon energy. What will these relationships look like in a lower energy future, where we need to once again work with each other and the land, rather than in isolation.
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Any thoughts on this bit on news Nate?
https://robertbryce.substack.com/p/michael-bloombergs-1-billion-assault
Nate, I wish you and you guests would get just a little more technical at times. For instance, tar sands oil from Canada and similar extra-heavy oil from Venezuela depend on a large energy subsidy from natural gas. It takes heat from steam to melt that glop out of source sand and rock, and gas is currently the easiest way to generate that steam. (Some people have proposed using nuclear reactors to do that.) I read that extracting Alberta tar sands requires about as much gas as the US currently extracts from the entire Utica formation. People I explain this to generally have no trouble understanding it and it often makes jaws drop.
Likewise, in one of your interviews with Art Berman, his explanation of why diesel engines are preferred for big, heavy machines really didn't deliver enough information to make the point. Perhaps he hadn't thought of a good way to explain why they're more efficient (higher compression, less power used to pull in air because they breathe easier). They lose less energy turning because they run at slower speeds and their higher efficiency means that they run much cooler under constant heavy loads, both of which help them last far longer than similarly-sized gasoline engines. Also, the higher energy density of diesel allows longer running time on a given size tank of fuel.
C'mon, we're adults. We can handle it.