Petroleum Amount Needed For New Car

CR4 is a good place to start as I think this question has been answered (in part) on CR4 within the last 1 or 2 years.

Sorry I don't remember what thread it was in, try a search using the CR4 search function on the right-hand side of the screen.

http://cr4.globalspec.com/search/sitesearch?do=show&sort=textmatchrank&srch=petroleum%20needed%20for%20a%20new%20car&order=asc

http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=cost+of+energy+to+build+a+new+car&sourceid=ie7&rls=com.microsoft:en-gb:IE-SearchBox&ie=&oe=&rlz=1I7GZEU_en&redir_esc=&ei=UqRZTK-pMo2i0gS24P3ZCA

why do you ask ?

You don't normally have mining trucks per se in petroleum upstream operations. Such an overall question is quite complex to resolve because offshore ops and onshore ops are quite different. Naturally all of these use petroleum. It would be difficult to think of any human endeavor in this century that doesn't depend on petroleum in some way. In your manufacture of cars (hybrids, electric, etc) what about arc welding on the prod line? These electric powered machines derive their power from where?......petroleum quite often.

Well so I don't know the answers to all this as again, it would take a huge amount of work to investigate. Also, would you get honest data from industry? Probably not, and also most of industry probably wouldn't want you to have their data for reasons of all kinds of fears they have, like are you going to use it to compete with them, etc etc? You would probably never be able to convince them otherwise.

I believe the reason they mention mining trucks is due to the mining of the ores to make metals for the car.

The Toronto Star Weekend Wheels section some time in 2009 indicated the enegy required to build a new car at some # of BTU's per pound of vehicle. I do not have the exact number but I did a calculation and for a 4000 lb vehicle and it is in the 1.9 billion BTU's range. I could not convert BTU's to barrels of oil so never finished the " if I buy a new car that gets better gas milage, am I actually using less or more energy and how many miles would I have to drive to break-even?"

I do own a 67 Chev but it's a show car and only drives about 1,200 mile a year.

Here is some info on energy contained in liquid petroleum (crude) and natural gas. I have checked this against my oil and gas wells I own in 14 states and it appears correct:

1 BBL (42 US Gal) crude petrol contains equivalent approx 5,800,000 BTU energy

1 MCF (thousand cu ft, NOT MILLION) contains 1,020,000 BTU so you might as well settle for approx 1,000,000 BTU

These 2 BTU numbers would mean that it takes about 6 MCF of nat'l gas to equal 1 bbl of crude petrol in energy content. This figure (6) is used throughout the petrolem industry when figuring BOE (bbls oil equivalent) for a certain amount of natural gas. So going back to the 2 BTU figures I gave first in this reply, it all agrees with logic and my petroleum experience. It's the other data that's so difficult.....namely how much energy is really used.

One more thing, natural gas right now is $ 4.50 per thousand cu ft (MCF) and crude oil is roughly $78.00 per bbl. Natural gas is in the toilet. A few months ago it ran up to $13.00/MCF. So now most companies have stopped drilling for gas except in Haynesville, Bakken and that play in the Appalachians which I believe is called Marcello shale/siltstone/or sand, whatever. Hope this helps

How far upstream do you wish to go, as this can go on for ever. How about the fuel used by the geologist and the mining company to locate the various mineral deposits for the the required materials?

Did we count the oil that the assembly line workers use to heat their houses in the winter?

If you look at the total cost of a product, chances are you can apply a certain percentage of that cost to energy. It might be as high as 30%. It could be much higher if you keep drilling down the supply chain.

I think on the orig posting, he wants to find the quantity of energy---several ways to express that naturally. But you're right, he might and probably will at some point also want to know the cost of it all.

Anyway, back to the original posting guy, I am at least of the opinion (without all the backup data naturally) you will find energy expended far exceeds any reasonable payback in energy saved for the products bought. If you examine today's big media you find technical matters are always dealt with in "sound bites"; nothing of substance. You also find the media doesn't have a clue what they're talking about (this includes international reputed talk radio talk show hosts). The hype re: wind turbines is just that (Boone Pickens, a total liar -- I've had personal dealings with him in the oil industry) is just full of baloney. So in conclusion I'm glad you're looking into this and good luck.

I agree. Case in point. My house central air conditioner (and gas furnace) is 37 years old. Still works great (I have replaced the outside blower motor twice in the fourteen years we have lived there). Regardless of its SEER rating, it does not make any sense for me to replace a perfectly good system that never has needed recharging and cranks out nice cold air. A new system although will achieve higher efficiencies, I will lose on the cost of money and it wastes resources to simply dump an older but fully functional system.

Greenwashers, for all their good intentions, don't understand those important points. When either my natural gas fired furnace or the central air conditioning finally fails beyond simple repairs, then I will replace it with higher efficiency system. Not necessarily the highest efficiency, because in most cases the premium charged for the those exceed the benefit returned compared to a system one or two notches below the highest.