Thread

U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve Falls to Lowest Level Since 1982

182 points · 234 comments · thelastgallon

brightball · 1790651317 · focus · HN ↗
Chart of strategic reserve levels since 1982, for context
<a href="https://en.macromicro.me/charts/41674/us-strategic-petroleum-reserve" rel="nofollow">https://en.macromicro.me/charts/41674/us-strategic-petroleum...
1. tehjoker · 1790654825 · focus · HN ↗
  I heard John Mearshimer say on a podcast that ~230k barrels, you can't go lower without damaging the caverns the oil is stored in, so we're pretty close to it being over.
  1. tmellon2 · 1790656462 · focus · HN ↗
    We can simply get rid of most oil - Just ONE square mile of batteries and a TOTAL of 100 x 100 square miles of Solar can power the entire USA 24/7.
    It is because of world wide adoption of EVs that the fossil fuel demand has reduced and stabilized gas prices in the US.
    See : <a href="https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/batteries-have-unlo" rel="nofollow">https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/batteries-have-unlo...
    clipsy · 1790658613 · focus · HN ↗
    > a TOTAL of 100 x 100 square miles of Solar
    But first we’d need to develop four dimensional solar panels
    cosmicgadget · 1790706408 · focus · HN ↗
    Math checks out. On the plus side, my panels exist in x, y, z, and time.
    readthenotes1 · 1790661199 · focus · HN ↗
    So cover 6% of California in solar panels?
    Or nearly all of Maryland?
    mapmap · 1790663986 · focus · HN ↗
    Panels on every roof and batteries in every garage.
    leonidasrup · 1790664836 · focus · HN ↗
    [dead]
    eesmith · 1790672544 · focus · HN ↗
    It's only about 1/6th the area of US lawns.
    More directly, the US uses over 30 million acres to grow corn for biofuels. That's over 40,000 square miles, if I did my math right.
    As <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corn_ethanol" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corn_ethanol points out, "Growing corn to fuel internal combustion vehicles is a highly inefficient use of land. A solar farm generating electricity to power an electric vehicle would power around 85 times as much distance as corn ethanol grown on the same area."
    wallst07 · 1790673794 · focus · HN ↗
    Yes, solar is far more efficient for generating power, but solar panels can't feed a population in a crisis.
    The ethanol market isn't just about fuel, it acts as an economic buffer that keeps millions of acres of land fertile, farmed, and operational. If a global supply chain collapse hits, we can immediately redirect that acreage to feed livestock and people. If you cover that prime topsoil with solar panels, that agricultural capacity is gone. A nation that can feed itself has national security sacrificing our emergency food reserve for electricity is not a good idea.
    eesmith · 1790684526 · focus · HN ↗
    The other 30,000 square miles -- 3/4th of it -- is still available for farming. And it isn't like solar panels can only be placed on existing farmland. I've seen a lot of rooftop and backyard solar installed around where I live.
    If there is a global supply chain collapse, then the price of fossil fuels will likely go through the roof, placing a greater demand for substitutes like ethanol, which will raise the price of food and feed crops as farmers switch to produce the more profitable fuel crops. Or if the government orders the farmers to only produce corn for livestock and people, then there's no effective fuel substitute.
    What keeps the land fertile is not the corn monoculture of places like Iowa, but rather a massive amount of fertilizer. As we know from the US war with Iran, fertilizer availability is subject to a global supply chain collapse because the current production methods require a lot of fossil fuel for power.
    If you want to reduce your dependency on the global fertilizer supply chain, you'll need a lot of cheap local power to make things like anhydrous ammonia locally.
    The experience with agrivoltaics shows that solar power and agriculture can coexist profitably on the same land. At the very least it's not simply a one-or-the-other option, or as you characterized it, "is gone".
    If you really want to keeps millions of acres land fertile to handle a possible future economic crisis, you should want severe limits on building new urban and low-density residential development on farmland. If you turn farmland into a suburb, that farmland is far more "gone", for agricultural purposes, than setting up solar panels.
    The paper at <a href="https://farmlandinfo.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/06/land-12-00574-with-cover.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://farmlandinfo.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/06/... estimates well over 10 million acres of agricultural land lost that way by 2040, which at 15,000+ square miles is far more than the quoted 10,000 square miles needed to get rid of most oil use.
    So it seems to me that for your goal of making the US less affected by a global supply chain collapse, you should want to have a lot more PV farms.

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