[HN Gopher] The hidden cost of gasoline
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The hidden cost of gasoline
Author : jseliger
Score : 57 points
Date : 2023-06-25 19:13 UTC (3 hours ago)
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| antiquark wrote:
| Now do the hidden cost of renewables....
| grecy wrote:
| A buddy works on offshore rigs around the world, and it got me
| thinking.
|
| I wonder, for every one gallon of gasoline I pump into my
| vehicle, how many were used to extract, refine, transport, store
| and pump it. I'm assuming it's at least 10 to 1. Maybe even 100
| to 1
|
| I bring this up because the company will fly him from anywhere in
| the world to where they want him to work, chopper him out to the
| rig, etc. etc. All of that gas consumed to get ONE worker onto
| the rig.
| userbinator wrote:
| Oil companies need to make a profit. If it cost more to produce
| than to sell, they wouldn't do it.
| akiselev wrote:
| That's called the "energy return on investment" [1] and it's a
| critical factor in how profitable a fossil fuel source is.
|
| An easily acccessed oil field can easily have an EROI of 20-50,
| so they spend a gallon worth of energy to extract 20-50
| gallons. Shale oil has a EROI as low as 1-1.5 and it's
| sometimes only worth it when burning the accompanying natural
| gas for free energy.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_return_on_investment
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| Eroei analysis usually doesn't go very far down the
| production process.
|
| What you want is Well to Tank calculations, which suggest
| that the process of making gasoline accounts for 15-20% of
| the total GHG emissions, so add 25% onto the number you get
| from burning the fuel in your car.
| ars wrote:
| It's easy enough to calculate: Check the cost of producing the
| fuel, and then calculate how much fuel you can buy (in bulk)
| for that much money.
|
| It won't be exact, but it'll be pretty close. And the number is
| higher than you might expect!
| throw0101a wrote:
| > _I wonder, for every one gallon of gasoline I pump into my
| vehicle, how many were used to extract, refine, transport,
| store and pump it._
|
| Well, almost 40% of all ship cargoes are fossil fuels (oil,
| coal, methane gas):
|
| *
| https://thelastdriverlicenseholder.com/2022/01/12/almost-40-...
| barelyauser wrote:
| A car will make 10 MPG and tow thousands of pounds. You can tow
| two pounds thousand of miles. And consider most of the route is
| made by very efficient boat, pipeline. It will not get even
| close to 1 to 10. Closer to 1 to 1.
| fleetwood wrote:
| It seems unlikely the ratio of (oil consumed by
| production):(oil production) is greater than 1:1. If it was
| greater than 1:1 - e.g. 10:1 - wouldn't the production company
| simply sell the 10 barrels instead of using the 10 barrels to
| produce and sell 1?
| inertiatic wrote:
| Not really. You need to drill to make any oil. So if you
| drilled and spent 10 parts to make it happen (flying people
| there, energy to drill etc.) and extracted 11 parts, you're
| selling 1 of those and then using the next 10 to mine the
| next 11 to get another 1 to sell. It would still make sense
| economically as long as you were turning a profit overall (so
| factoring the total cost into what you're actually selling),
| although it would be a huge waste in absolute terms.
|
| I do doubt that would be a realistic estimate though.
| jmclnx wrote:
| I never understood the move of gas tanks from above ground to
| underground. The few stations left with above ground tanks were
| forced to bury them ages ago.
|
| To me, you can easily detect leaks if above ground and correct.
| The local Gov can even hire someone to check above ground tanks.
| Seems oil companies did the move to avoid inspections.
| aeternum wrote:
| Above ground seems more dangerous from an exposed tank point of
| view. A car could run into it, debris from a wind storm or
| natural disaster, foul play. These could be mitigated with some
| kind of containment structure but then you require more land
| area and investment.
| xenomachina wrote:
| s/Below/Above/ ?
| aeternum wrote:
| yes thanks, edited
| rr808 wrote:
| Does this happen? Here in NJ underground is now banned, finding
| a buried tank on your property is an expensive nightmare.
| [deleted]
| tivert wrote:
| > I never understood the move of gas tanks from above ground to
| underground. The few stations left with above ground tanks were
| forced to bury them ages ago.
|
| > To me, you can easily detect leaks if above ground and
| correct. The local Gov can even hire someone to check above
| ground tanks. Seems oil companies did the move to avoid
| inspections.
|
| Above-ground tanks might be better for detecting leaks, but I'd
| imagine they're much more vulnerable to catastrophic accidents
| (e.g. a truck slamming into one and causing a giant fire).
| wak90 wrote:
| Do you not consider contaminating a city's water supply
| catastrophic
| ars wrote:
| No, because that's not something that actually happens due
| to underground storage. The leaks are local, and cause
| minimal long term harm. They are not "contaminating a
| city's water supply", that's simply not true.
| atshane253 wrote:
| Its absolutely true, one of my city's primary aquifers is
| directly under ground. Future underground tanks will not
| be permitted because they've been leaking into the
| groundwater, especially if and when they're abandoned
| because the business failed.
| semicolon_storm wrote:
| That's demonstrably false. Google the red hill fuel tanks
| bluGill wrote:
| Underground tanks are best thought of as indoor tanks these
| days. They build an underground room, put the tanks in and then
| inspect them visually, and the room collects any leaks.
|
| Not always of course, but that is a common way to do them.
| landemva wrote:
| I have been to many industrial sites, and oil/gas/diesel tanks
| have been above ground. Some had bollards to block physical
| bumps. Many had spill containment knee walls.
|
| There are probably regulations depending on type of tank and
| contents to allow these private tanks. Above ground does make
| identification of a leak more rapid.
| 13of40 wrote:
| Above ground tanks also have the benefit of being gravity
| fed, so you can use them in rural areas without a power
| supply or complex pumping equipment.
| cameldrv wrote:
| A small airport I used to fly out of switched to an aboveground
| tank when the old underground one was found to have a leak. The
| permitting and construction costs for an underground tank were
| much higher with double walls and I believe sensors to detect
| leaks.
|
| The rationale was exactly as you say -- with an aboveground
| tank you can easily see fuel leaking out and fixing a leak is
| also very easy by comparison.
| ars wrote:
| This isn't as big of an issue as they make it seem. Bacteria will
| rapidly degrade the gasoline:
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03790...
|
| I'm not trying to say it's a good thing, but it's not the huge
| disaster they are trying to imply.
| Gigachad wrote:
| If that was true, why do old petrol station lots sit vacant for
| decades because they haven't been decontaminated yet?
| bluGill wrote:
| Lead isn't broken down, and that was common in gasoline.
|
| Not everything breaks down, most of what is in modern gas
| breaks down, but not everything.
| rgbrenner wrote:
| That paper says you need to collect soil samples quickly so you
| can classify the type of ignitable liquid that contaminated the
| soil.
|
| It does NOT say the soil is nontoxic and safe; or that it does
| not need to be cleaned up; or that it won't contaminate ground
| water. Those degraded compounds are still toxic af.
| ars wrote:
| > Those degraded compounds are still toxic af.
|
| No they aren't. They degrade (eventually) to just water and
| CO2. That was not the only paper on the topic, there are tons
| more. I picked that one because it highlighted just how
| quickly bacteria consume the gasoline.
|
| Gasoline and oil are natural products that will completely
| and harmlessly biodegrade, they only cause trouble when
| collected in bulk, but do not have long-term harmful effects
| once they are diluted, because bacteria completely consume
| them.
| dzhiurgis wrote:
| Yeah, the planet will be fine, it's just humans and entire
| ecosystems that will be screwed.
| ars wrote:
| Nothing bad will happen from these leaks, gasoline is
| very biodegradable. Humans will be unharmed and the
| ecosystem will be unharmed.
| scotty79 wrote:
| Which bacteria eat benzene specifically?
| philipkglass wrote:
| Pseudoxanthomonas spadix BD-a59, for one:
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2592918/
|
| This is an interesting study. They identified the species
| by culturing it from contaminated soil sampled at a South
| Korean gas station. The study also mentions previously
| identified bacteria that eat BTEX (benzene, toluene,
| ethylbenzene, and xylene -- closely related hydrocarbons
| having a single aromatic ring) and explains why there are
| likely to be many as-yet-unknown species that also
| consume BTEX.
|
| The short version: "Countless other BTEX-degrading
| bacteria may be present in the soil or sediment but may
| not compete well in aqueous slurries or perhaps cannot
| grow in minimal medium; thus, this alternative pool of
| BTEX-degrading populations is likely to be overlooked.
| Our study reinforced this concept."
| refibrillator wrote:
| > The benzene content of typical gasoline is 0.76% by mass
| (gasoline composition). A spill of 10 gallons of gasoline (only
| 0.1% of the 10,000 gallon tank, a quantity undetectable by manual
| gauging and inventory control) contains about 230 grams of
| benzene. The EPA's Maximum Contaminant Level (MCL) for benzene is
| 5 parts per billion (ppb), or 5 micrograms per liter, in drinking
| water. The density of gasoline is about 0.8 g/mL, so the benzene
| in a 10 gallon gasoline leak can contaminate about 46 million
| liters, or 12 million gallons of water
|
| > In 1983, the EPA declared leaking tanks a serious threat to
| groundwater, and Congress soon stepped in with new regulations.
| One of the largest spills was in Brooklyn, where a 17 million-
| gallon pool of oil gradually collected beneath a Mobil gas
| station -- a larger spill than the Exxon Valdez disaster in 1989
|
| Yikes, never heard about that. Yet another negative externality
| slipping through the cracks. Profits collected, responsibility
| socialized.
| [deleted]
| kortilla wrote:
| >Profits collected, responsibility socialized.
|
| This happens literally any time someone makes a mistake
| somewhere that doesn't get caught. It's not some magic "gotcha"
| that only applies to these types of industries and anecdotes
| are not evidence that an industry depends on it.
|
| Here are other examples of people "privatizing the profits
| while socializing the losses":
|
| - a bad teacher who doesn't lose their job for teaching
| children incorrect things.
|
| - a cook that doesn't get fired when you get food poisoning.
|
| - a doctor that makes a negligent mistake and causes a
| permanent injury or death without getting caught.
|
| The examples are endless and scale from individuals up through
| corporations and governments across every industry and mode of
| governance.
|
| I recommend you don't use the phrase if you don't want to look
| dumb because it's a pretty strong indicator of a lack of
| critical thinking skills.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| A carbon filter for your drinking water will deal with benzene
| and other organic compounds
| flashback2199 wrote:
| The public should never be required to filter out pollution,
| especially from basic necessities such as water.
| dzhiurgis wrote:
| Remember the outrage last year when some sunscreen was found to
| have few PPM of benzene?
|
| The outrage from that FUD and people stopping use of sunscreen
| altogether likely caused more damage than benzene itself.
| NoZebra120vClip wrote:
| Nah, sunscreens are way more harmful than sun exposure
| itself. It's the sunscreen that will cause the cancer
| eventually.
|
| Here's the chain of events: young patient gets bad sunburn,
| sees doctor. Doctor sympathizes and warns patient of dire
| consequences of not using sunblock 100% of the time. Patient
| agrees and mostly uses sunblock for several decades, forgets
| a few times and gets more sunburns. In fact, patient is way
| more likely to be exposed to powerful sunlight because of the
| invincibility conferred by sunblock.
|
| Patient gets cancer from substances in sunblock, and feels
| terribly guilty for not using it because a few sunburns must
| have given her skin cancer.
| EatingWithForks wrote:
| The chain of events doesn't form a causal relationship that
| substances in sunblock cause cancer. It just expresses
| someone might use sunblock more often after the advice from
| a doctor.
| NoZebra120vClip wrote:
| Yes; very self-serving recommendation, isn't it?
| EatingWithForks wrote:
| No, In mean quite literally the described situation does
| not have anything to do with whether or not sunblock
| itself causes cancer. Like a whole paragraph of scenario
| was provided and then out of nowhere "and then they get
| cancer from chemicals in sunblock". Which chemicals,
| specifically? What do we do about the fact that nearly
| all women are recommended sunblock daily in nearly all
| beauty regimens for decades and yet facial skin cancers
| aren't gendered?
| dzhiurgis wrote:
| Replying to EatingWithForks
|
| > facial skin cancers aren't gendered?
|
| So that also means sunscreen doesn't work either?
| tkanarsky wrote:
| Is this claim substantiated? I've seen all sorts of
| opinions ranging from "use European sunscreens containing
| non-FDA-approved UVA filters" to "just rub lard on skin,
| drink raw milk, and lift heavy weights". I feel like
| chemical sunscreens have been ubiquitous enough for long
| enough that any correlation in skin cancer rates would have
| been long pointed out by now.
| arrosenberg wrote:
| No, they are an idiot. UV light causes various mutations
| at the DNA level, which accumulate over time and can lead
| to skin cancer. Skin cancers have some of the highest
| number of mutations of any form of cancer.
| Runepika wrote:
| Sulfur and benzene are under a cap-and-trade federal compliance
| program
|
| https://www.epa.gov/gasoline-standards/gasoline-sulfur-benze...
|
| Has been very successful in reducing sulfur in road fuel down to
| <10ppm. Not sure if it's possible to even move gasoline over 3.8%
| benzene today.
| derbOac wrote:
| So many economic analyses of social and environmental problems
| are full of these "hidden cost" factors, and they're baked into
| why so many things occur in the first place. "Capitalized profit,
| socialized risk" is just one example but they all fall into a
| broader category, of scenarios where enormous costs or
| dependencies are just ignored or hidden. I might go so far as to
| argue that large segments of societal economics are based on this
| dynamic, and might be the achilles heel of modern capitalism.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| I generally agree, though I'd like to add a similar caveat I
| posted earlier on another thread[0]: _those are all relatively
| recent problems_. Like, e.g. petroleum chemistry and chemical
| industries only started in the earnest in the last 150 years.
| Chemical leaks and ground water contamination became an issue
| roughly half-way between then and today. We only have a decent
| ability to detect such leaks and measure their health impact
| for half as long still.
|
| It may be that the main reason we're discovering so many
| externalities and bad second-order effects buried in everything
| that makes for a modern life, is because it's only recently
| that sciences and engineering progressed enough to allow
| detecting and quantifying those issues.
|
| --
|
| [0] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36472880
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