Is there life without black gold?

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

In recent years, the wave of publications devoted to the fight against global warming is becoming similar to the tsunami wave that swept all kinds of international conferences, and after them the overwhelming majority of news and even analytical portals. Only the lazy does not write on this topic - the topic is in demand by readers and viewers "in the entire civilized world."

The quotation marks are for the simple reason that they are diligently trying to convince us that global warming worries everyone, from small to large in all countries, cities and towns. So diligently that a suspicion involuntarily creeps in - is it not repeating before our eyes a story similar to the one that already happened with "a harmful freon that punches holes in the entire ozone layer of the planet, from which we will all die."

The fight against global warming has narrowed to loud demands for decarbonization of the energy sector, all other problems are fading into the background. There is no beast more terrible than carbon dioxide, and the furnaces of power plants that generate it! Therefore - down with any carbon, in any form, otherwise we will all drown, while suffocating from the lack of clean air, and we will do it at an incredible speed - most likely after the next rain on Thursday.

From a scientific approach - back to populism

Carbon, in case someone suddenly forgot what this term means in Latin - just carbon, a chemical element denoted by the letter C. The fact that carbon is coal, this is graphite and diamonds, this is graphene and hydrocarbon fiber, we now hear quite often, but it is worth recalling that carbon is also the basis of any organic matter, that is, it is the basis of protein life in the third Sun planet. If we do not forget about this, then the term “decarbonization” ceases to be sympathetic, but the latent antipathy has more compelling reasons.

Recall that the predecessor of the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement was the Kyoto Protocol, signed in 1997, and this protocol was scientifically much more substantiated. The goal of the Kyoto Agreement was to stabilize the concentration of greenhouse gases at a level that would not allow anthropogenic impact on the planet's climate system. Greenhouse gases in the plural, not just carbon dioxide, and the list of gases that can potentially lead to the global greenhouse effect was determined not by politicians, but by scientists. There are six such gases: carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, hydrofluorocarbons, perfluorocarbons, and sulfur hexatoride. Exaggerated attention exclusively to carbon dioxide has nothing to do with a scientific approach to the problem - you cannot pull out one component from a single set and declare that it is the root of all problems.

In recent years, liquefied natural gas, which is produced and consumed in an increasing number of countries, has become the most "fashionable" direction in the energy sector. We are assured that LNG is the most environmentally friendly, diverting attention from the fact that during its transportation and storage, the evaporation of methane is technologically inevitable, and methane is included in the "Kyoto list" along with carbon dioxide. We are assured that coal in the furnaces of power plants and boiler houses is an "infernal evil", diverting attention from the fact that the technology of its processing, the technology of its combustion can not only significantly reduce the harm to the environment, but also solve the economic problems of developing countries, in which the problem of the availability of electricity has not yet been resolved. Another "horror story" before our eyes is oil and its refined products - in order to get rid of the harmful substances generated as a result of the operation of internal combustion engines, we are offered to immediately switch the whole planet to electric cars. Not to develop the technology for cleaning motor fuel from harmful impurities, not to create new types of fuel, not to develop new types of filters, but to take, and even prohibit - this is how we are offered to understand the word "progress". To prohibit, not to admit, to close - this is how a high road to a shining world looks like, in which no one stole Greta Tumberg's childhood.

Tellingly, the authors of this kind of texts type them by clicking the plastic keys of the keyboard, and this valuable information rushes along the wires, reliably covered with appropriate insulation, and many readers gain access to it thanks to the presence of smartphones in elegant but durable plastic cases. The decarbonized world exists in close proximity to the world of Harry Potter and the planet Narnia, and you and I live in a place where it is impossible to do without coal and hydrocarbons, where their use was the result of the development of a whole host of sciences - geology, materials science, inorganic and organic chemistry, and many others. And there is simply no real reason to abandon their further application and development for the sake of fantasy fans, no matter how surprising it may sound.

We write "decarbonization", we keep in mind "Refusal of progress"

The mainstream western green movement urges us to abandon existing technologies without offering an adequate replacement, trying to put the cart in front of the horse. First - cost-effective technologies, and only then - attempts to disseminate them on a mass scale, otherwise nothing reasonable will come of it. If you want to develop exclusively "green technologies" for generating electricity from renewable energy sources - find a way to store this energy, and a cost-effective method on an industrial scale. But we are persistently imposed the need for the massive introduction of solar and wind generation in the "here and now" mode, immediately, quickly and even faster. Seriously believe that this is done solely out of love for nature? You can, of course, but for this you need to have an extreme degree of naivety.

Since 2014, the market for energy resources has become a market for buyers - after the fall in prices, not only the countries of the “golden billion” can acquire them, but also the countries, as they used to say, of the Third World. Potentially, this creates chances so that from the category of developing countries in Africa and Asia, they could quickly move to the category of developed ones, catching up with the states of the collective West. And it is for this reason that Europe and its allies are forcing these countries to abandon hydrocarbon and nuclear energy, urging them to develop only at the expense of renewable energy sources, from which the construction of hydroelectric power plants has also been "deleted". What can be the result of agreement with the notorious "world community"?

Solar and wind energy in the language of professionals is intermittent alternative generation, since neither one nor the other is fundamentally dispatchable. We do not know how to control cloudiness, the strength and direction of the wind, we do not have the technology for accumulating electricity on an industrial scale. Solar and wind power plants, which do not rely on the foundation of traditional generation, do not make it possible to create unified energy systems, do not make it possible to ensure a reliable supply of electricity. The consequence of this approach will inevitably be the inability to develop energy-intensive industries, namely, they provide the basic development of any developing economy. There is no reliable supply of energy - there is no possibility to develop non-ferrous metallurgy, there is no possibility to develop chemical production, there is no possibility to create enterprises of a continuous cycle.

If without "smart words", then here is the simplest example: tourists will not go to cities where there is no electricity at night, water supply and sewerage do not work. If they do not go, it means that they will not bring money, they will not provide sales for cafes, restaurants, and the flow of money in museums will not grow. They will not go where there is no way to get to historical or natural attractions other than by horse-drawn transport or if there is a good wind rose and sunny weather. Africa will develop exclusively renewable energy sources - these countries will continue to trade exclusively in minerals, exchanging the received currency for essential goods, and will continue to be “developing” as long as there is still population there.1

What is presented as a frantic struggle for ecology and love for nature is just a new, previously unused way of unfair competition, nothing more. The next, no less logical conclusion: this can only be countered by the further development of technologies for the processing and use of traditional energy resources and their widest distribution. When supplying energy resources, Russian exporters should be able to offer the service as a package, as only Rosatom is currently doing. If coal is offered, you need to be able to offer an ultra-supercritical pressure power plant, and fluidized-bed boilers, and the latest thermal gas filtration systems, and technologies that allow environmentally friendly and cost-effective processing of ash and slag.

Currently, only 42 countries use LNG - there are not enough regasification terminals, there are no pipelines leading from the coast inland, not all regions of the world have underground gas storage facilities, no power plants, and so on. Coal, gas, oil are competitive goods in all markets, and only in recent years Rosatom has signed fuel contracts until the end of the operating life of the Rooppur NPP in Bangladesh, the Belarusian NPP, Akkuyu NPP in Turkey and El-Dabaa in Egypt … The service life of NPPs based on VVER-1200 reactors is 60 years, during this time the nuclear corporation has a guaranteed sale of its nuclear fuel, has the ability to plan the activities and development of its mining and fuel divisions, and implement long-term logistics schemes. Against the background of Rosatom, our coal and gas companies are still at risk: at present, only GazpromEnergoholding has begun implementing its first foreign project to build a power plant in Serbia; domestic coal companies have nothing of the kind in their assets.

The sanctions of the collective West against Russia are not about Ukraine

The situation with oil looks even more complicated. Its share in the global energy balance in 2018 amounted to 32%, but in a number of countries there is active work to replace petroleum products as a motor fuel with liquefied carbon gas, compressed gas and LNG, and this trend is really capable of, it would seem, lead to reduce the importance of oil as an energy resource. However, the forecast given by OPEC in 2018 sounds different: according to the estimates of this organization, high demand from the petrochemical industry and due to the growth of motorization in developing countries, world oil demand by 2040 will grow by 14.5 million barrels per day, to 111, 7 million barrels. At the same time, oil produced by the OPEC countries by the same period will occupy a slightly larger share - it will grow from 34 to 36 percent. In order for non-OPEC oil-producing countries, including Russia, to be able to maintain their market shares, they will have to prepare for a further increase in the share of hard-to-recover oil reserves, on average to 25%. The short conclusion is obvious - in the next 20 years Russia will have to fight for oil production, mastering new production technologies.

In other words, the industry, for objective reasons, will have to become more knowledge-intensive, master innovative and digital technologies. In the context of unilateral restrictive measures on the part of the coalition led by the United States (recall that the use of the word "sanctions" is a deliberate substitution of concepts, in accordance with international law, only the UN Security Council has the right to make a decision on the use of sanctions), this means that the creation and the development of technologies for the extraction of hard-to-recover oil reserves, technologies for offshore and offshore production, oil production in the Arctic is increasingly on the agenda. If we are not able to solve both problems - maintaining and even increasing the production of energy resources while simultaneously creating our own projects for power plants of a new technological level, it is impossible to talk about any stable development of Russia.

The European Union, using the provisions of the Third Energy Package, is making every effort to ensure that the markets for energy resources remain the markets of buyers, the increased volatility of world prices for oil and coal does not make it possible to plan revenues for the state budget of Russia. Here you can already hear the latent hum of voices:

The answer is arithmetically simple: only Rosneft transferred more than 4 trillion rubles in taxes to the Russian budget in 2018, the company paid another 112 billion rubles to the state in the form of dividends, the average number of employees in the company in 2018 was 308 thousand people. If we add to these numbers similar indicators for other oil companies, then the answer to emotional words becomes clear - the preservation and development of the oil industry is important and necessary for Russia. As a matter of fact, this fact does not depend on what our state system was called and is called - socialism or capitalism, and the export of crude oil began in the 60s of the last century.

You can't live without oil, no

But all these reflections are quite general, they will have a solid foundation only if we continue to expand our knowledge about the most important thing for our civilization - about energy resources. "Import substitution" is an interesting word that sounds beautiful, but operating with it without understanding the meaning is the style of astrology and magic, the analytical online journal Geoenergetika.ru cannot afford this by definition. And we again run into a real paradox: in a country that is recognized by the whole world as one of the leaders in the gas and oil sectors, there is a minimum of knowledge about this industry among those who are not directly involved in it. We manage to call ourselves cultured people, living with the confidence that electricity is taken from the outlet, and oil - from underground reservoirs, which can be reached by energetically hitting the pipe into the ground, after which this oil will fountain from there for several years and go by itself to any place we need.

With stories about the electrical component of power plants, about what kind of work and worries it costs the appearance of electricity for end consumers, we were once invaluable by the industry professional, Engineer with a capital letter Dmitry Talanov, thanks to whom a separate series of articles appeared in the Site Library. And just before the new year, 2020, we had a real festive surprise - to help you get acquainted with the oil industry, dear readers, agreed oil engineer Angelika Smirnova, a graduate of Russia's main “forge of personnel” in the oil and gas industry - the University. IM Gubkina, specializing in Oil and Gas Field Drilling.

Black gold planet

All articles about oil that appear in the media can be divided into two large classes - some talk about oil from the point of view of business, exchange trading and geopolitics, others are filled with professional terms that the authors do not even try to decipher

Neuralink will focus its brain implants on patients with disabilities in an effort to restore them to use their limbs.

“We hope that next year, after FDA approval, we will be able to use implants in our first humans - people with severe spinal cord injuries such as tetraplegic and quadriplegic,” said Elon Musk.

Musk's company isn't the first to go this far. In July 2021, neurotech startup Synchron received FDA clearance to begin testing its neural implants in paralyzed people.

It is impossible to deny the benefits that can be derived from the fact that a person will have access to limbs that are paralyzed. This is truly a remarkable achievement for human innovation. However, many are concerned about the ethical aspects of technology-human fusion if it goes beyond this area of application.

Many years ago, people believed that Ray Kurzweil did not have time to dine with his predictions that computers and humans - a singularity event - would eventually become reality. And yet we are here. As a result, this topic, often referred to as "transhumanism", has become the subject of heated debate.

Transhumanism is often described as:

"a philosophical and intellectual movement that advocates the improvement of the human condition through the development and widespread dissemination of sophisticated technologies that can significantly increase life expectancy, mood and cognitive abilities, and predicts the emergence of such technologies in the future."

Many are concerned that we lose sight of what it means to be human. But it is also true that many treat this concept on an all-or-nothing basis - either everything is bad or everything is good. But instead of just defending our positions, perhaps we can spark curiosity and listen to all sides.

Yuval Harari, author of Sapiens: A Brief History of Humanity, discusses this issue in simple terms. He stated that technology is advancing at such a breakneck pace that very soon we will be developing people who will surpass the species we know today so much that they will become a completely new species.

“Soon we will be able to rewire our bodies and brains, whether through genetic engineering or by directly connecting the brain to a computer. Or by creating completely inorganic entities or artificial intelligence - which is not based on an organic body and an organic brain at all. going beyond just another kind."

Where this can lead, since the billionaires from Silicon Valley have the power to change the entire human race. Should they ask the rest of humanity if this is a good idea? Or should we just accept the fact that this is already happening?