RE: More doom and gloom

> -----Original Message-----
> From: John W Burgeson [mailto:jwburgeson@juno.com]
> Sent: Friday, August 13, 2004 9:32 AM
> To: glennmorton@entouch.net
> Cc: jwburgeson@juno.com; asa@calvin.edu
> Subject: Re: More doom and gloom
>
> I am puzzled that you cannot answer my three questions.

I am not puzzled at all. I am not in the refining end of the business. I
am a layman in that area like anyone else. However, googling things is a
good way to find out answers. I found
http://science.howstuffworks.com/oil-refining4.htm that 40% of oil is
turned into gasoline. I do know one thing though, that depends on the
quality of the crude. The heavier crudes which are being produced today
don't make as much gasoline. It is the lighter crudes to which that
figure applies, I am sure.

> Surely a barrel of oil must logically translate into SOME
> number of gallons of gas. I am missing something here, and it
> is probably profound.

It does but a barrel of oil is not the same as the next barrel of oil.
All are chemically different.
>
> One reason I asked -- there was an ad in the NYT last week
> about the sale of hybrid busses to -- I think, San Francisco.
> The ad concluded with the statement that if the seven largest
> cities in the US would also buy a fleet, 40 million gallons
> of gas a year would be saved, and that would be a big impact.
> My skeptic meter told me that such an impact would not be
> more than a lea bite. Was it right?

Using the above figure I calculate 2.4 million barrels of oil. We use 22
million barrels per day in the US and that equates to 8 billion barrels
of oil a year. This savings represents .00029 of the current usage.
Sarcastic mode on: Yep that will surely solve the problem. [sarcastic
mode off] Do you detect any math errors?
Received on Fri Aug 13 16:24:04 2004