Today, more from Energy Matters of the American Energy Society: Electricity cost of generation from 209 coal power plants are more expensive than from solar or wind farms. Yet, fossil fuels still dominate in the production of electricity. However, how about this stunning bit of information?    Global coal consumption reached an all-time high in 2022 and will slightly increase in 2023 . Part of the problem with wind and solar is that they are intermittent.  Cost effective storage is a must.  Form Energy announced an agreement with Xcel Energy to deploy its  iron-air battery  systems to integrate more renewable energy for its customers. The sleeping giant of energy storage is  pumped storage . EV and hybrid vehicle sales continue to increase. The U.S. is on pace to set a new oil production record sometime in 2024. The  oil industry in Venezuela has collapsed . Produced 3.1 million barrels / day in 1988. Today, only 0.7 million barrels/day. How...

SORRY, BUT SATELLITE CONNECTION IN ARABIAN/INDIAN OCEAN WAS NONEXISTENT.  So today, two postings. Two days ago, I shared some facts about petroleum, and how this resource would run out in less than 50 years.  Notice that President Joe Biden  opened up oil trade again with Venezuela .  They only have more oil reserves than any other country, even more than Saudi Arabia.  So, anyway, what are countries of the Arabian Peninsula doing about the inevitability of running out of oil in less than half a century? The United Arab Emirates is attempting to gain the travel interest of the world by building the biggest of almost everything.  They figure that people would want to visit a country with these attractions.  It seems to be working. Dubai in particular began with pearls, shifted to oil, and quickly ran out of this resource, so turned to finances and tourism, t hrough having : Ain Dubai, the world's largest Ferris Wheel, which opened last year.  From ...

We departed Muscat and are sailing to Mumbai, India.  The   Arabian Peninsula  is a largely ignored part of the world by most visitors.  Under 1.25 million square miles are most of the world's oil.  It is relatively small compared to the USA, which has 3.8 msm and 335 million people.  The AP has a population of 86 million. Saudi Arabia  36.5 million Yeman  33.7 million UAE  9.4 million Oman  4.6 million Kuwait  4.3 million Qatar  2.7 million Bahrain  1.5 million The cities with the two largest population are in Saudi Arabia:  Riyadh 7.5 million and Jeddah 4.8 million. However, in 1950 the population was only 9.5 million, mostly Bedouins in the desert.  Then oil was discovered,  first in Iran in 1908  by the British.  But the story of oil goes back to 600 BC, when the Chinese first found this liquid.  More recently, there was Colonel Edwin Drake's 1859 oil well in Pennsylvania, and within a dec...