Outrun Change

We need to learn quickly to keep up with the massive change around us so we don't get run over. We need to outrun change.

13 Oct 2018

Oil production in August 2018 for North Dakota hits another record level

In August the crude oil production in the state hit an average of 1,291,496 barrels of oil per day (bopd). As always, that is the preliminary tally, which will change when a few late reports arrive.

The record high before a several year slump was an average 1,229,572 bopd in December 2014.

In the last five months there have been three record highs with two months barely under the 12/14 record.

Here is my graph of production state-wide and Bakken only (including Sanish, Three Forks, and Bakken/Three Forks levels). Notice the steady increase over the last few months and a strong rise since winter of ‘16/’17.

 

For a far longer perspective, look at the average production data since 1990.  I like this graph because it shows a pattern of explosive growth from about 2008 through late-2014, a drop until around the end of 2017 and a rapid growth since then. The longer view:

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01 Oct 2018
1 Comment

Cost and time to cross the Atlantic has dropped by more than 90% in the last 500 years.

Columbus’ Ships. Image courtesy of Adobe Stock.

Transatlantic travel time has dropped radically in the last 500 years.  Time to transit the Atlantic has dropped about 99% and cost has dropped about 95% by my calculations.

Let’s look at several data points for cost and time, then calculate one indicator of improved quality of life.

Human Progress provides fun data points on August 2, 2018 in their post, A Reminder of How Far Transatlantic Travel Has Come.

Update: An earlier post on November 27, 2015 discussed Time to cross the Atlantic – 500 year history.

Update: Added in travel time of Concorde at end of the post.

Columbus’ first trip

The 1492 trip by Christopher Columbus took two years of lobbying before the king and queen of Spain approved 2 million Spanish maravedis to fund the trip. A professor has calculated that would be comparable to about US$1,000,000 today.

The cost seems low to me. I’ll look at that more later.

Crew size was 87 according to this article. The accountant in me is driven to calculate the cost per crewman.  That would give an average cost of $11,494. I’ll round that to $11,500 and ignore any adjustment for several crew members who died on the trip.

His trip took two months, nine days, which I calculate at 70 days (30+31+9).

Mayflower

Mayflower. Image courtesy of Adobe Stock.

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Posted in Change in the past, Economics, Technology and tagged
13 Jul 2018

Oil production in May 2018 for North Dakota hits new record level

Multiple pumpjacks on a well pad is a normal thing in North Dakota. Photo by James Ulvog.

In May the crude oil production in the state hit an average of 1,244,629 barrels of oil per day (bopd). As always, that is the preliminary tally, which will change a bit over the next two months as a few late reports arrive.

That is 15,057 bopd higher than the previous record of 1,229,572 bopd in December 2014.

Here is my graph of production state-wide and Bakken only (including Sanish, Three Forks, and Bakken/Three Forks levels):

For a longer term perspective, here is the total monthly production since 1990:

Read more…

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20 Jun 2018
2 Comments

Value of monthly oil production in North Dakota through April 2018

Fourteen wells are on that pad, which is on the south side of Williston near the Missouri River. Photo by James Ulvog.

Previously discussed the near-record level of oil production in the state during April. Here is the graph of average daily production since 2004:

What is the value of that oil? Multiply those average daily production levels by days in the month and then multiply by the following average sweet crude prices in the state:

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Posted in Energy and tagged , ,
19 Jun 2018

Oil production for April 2018 in North Dakota getting close to record level

There is space for more than 6 pumps on that site. Might be as many as a dozen when fully drilled. Photo by James Ulvog.

In April crude oil production in the state hit an average of 1,224,948 barrels of oil per day (bopd). That is the preliminary tally, which will change a bit in the next report as a few late reports arrive.

That is really close to the record high of an average 1,229,572 bopd in December 2014. Another 4,624 per day would get the state to a new record. That could be achieved for April by late reports from the field. Or, since production increased 42,112 bopd since December, the May data will likely break the record.

Here is my graph of production state-wide and Bakken only (including Sanish, Three Forks, and Bakken/Three Forks levels):

For more background, here is the total monthly production since 2004:

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07 May 2018

Operating costs of military aircraft using reimbursement rates as an approximation

An F-16 Fighting Falcon joins in formation with a P-40 Warhawk (front), P-51 Mustang (bottom), and an F-86 Sabre (top) during the Heritage Flight Training Course March 2, 2014, over Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, Ariz.  (U.S Air Force photo/ Airman 1st Class Cheyenne Morigeau)

The Department of Defense has established reimbursement rates for the airplanes and helicopters in the military inventory. If I’m reading this right, these are the hourly rates for reimbursement when an aircraft or helicopter is loaned out.

This seems to be usable as an estimate for the operating costs of airplanes. I previously discussed Operating costs per hour for USAF planes. This post provides more detailed descriptions.

There are separate rates for loans to another US military organization, other federal agencies, and two other categories I don’t understand (FMS and All Other).

Sure would be fun to put together a tongue-in-cheek conversation for which these rates would be used (Short outline: British Defense Minister: “Say old chap, we’re putting together a strike in our little squabble and we’d like to borrow two flights of Strike Eagles and a half-dozen tankers for a couple of days. Can you do that and what’ll the tab be?” U.S. Secretary of Defense: “Sure, for you, no problem. Um, yeah, we have the resources available. Hold on a second while I look up the list price.”)

More seriously, I’m guessing this provides a simple way to calculate the dollar amount of assistance we provide our allies, say the French need air transport to land a brigade of troops in Africa to deal with a new round of shooting in a civil war, like in Mali or Central African Republic. Or, say we provide refueling for the superb fighters of our French and British allies while all three of us launch a coordinated air strike in Syria.

Anyone care to share your guesses on how these reimbursement rates would actually be used?

B-52D at March Field museum. Photo by James Ulvog.

Reimbursement rates

On a practical basis, this reimbursement table provides a frame of reference for the operating costs of U.S. airborne resources. The rates are broken out between operating and maintenance (O&M) and personnel costs (MilPers) on tab F2. That likely approximates the hourly operating costs and the hourly compensation for a standard crew.

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17 Feb 2018

Volume and value of 2017 oil production in North Dakota

Notice all the empty space on that pad? Notice the disproportionately high number of storage tanks for the number of pumpjacks on site? One day there will be a lot more wells in operation. Photo by James Ulvog.

Before showing the average daily production, annual production, and value of that production, just a note on December 2017 production.

Average daily production dropped from 1,196,976 bopd (revised) in November to 1,181,319 bopd (preliminary) in December, a decline of 15,657 bopd, or 1.31%.

Here is what the average daily production by year looks like. Notice the recovery in 2017?

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10 Feb 2018

More cool pictures of the successfully Falcon Heavy test

Image in public domain, courtesy of SpaceX

Here are a few more pix of the successful test of SpaceX’s brand new Falcon Heavy and its payload.

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Posted in Change around us, Change down the road and tagged , | Leave a comment
08 Feb 2018

Sounds from the Falcon Heavy launch

Behind the Black points us to a report of What the Falcon Heavy launch sounded like.

What a treat it must have been to watch from miles away.

Using special stereo mikes, the recording catches the clicks of many nearby cameras before being overwhelmed by the rocket sounds.

Listen carefully for the multiple sonic booms from the boosters returning to earth. Each booster gives off a boom from the engines, then the landing legs, and then the directional control arms. So 6 booms expected. Sound track wave form shows echos, but one overlapped, so there were 5 booms from each booster.

Astounding, all the way around.

Also Behind the Black provided Update on Falcon Heavy core stage landing failure.  Turns out that two of the three engines scheduled to fire, slowing the descent, did not do so. Core booster missed the landing barge by around 300 feet.

BtB says this is why one runs experiments. Find out what doesn’t work, figure out the reason, and fix it.

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07 Feb 2018

Successful test of Falcon Heavy

Image in public domain, courtesy of SpaceX

SpaceX’s test of their three booster, 27 engine rocket was an astounding success. The three side-by-side Falcon 9 boosters worked perfectly together. The two side boosters successfully separated, which I think is the highlight of the test.

Both of the side boosters were recovered. See astounding photo above.

Image in public domain, courtesy of SpaceX

The payload was successfully lifted into the Van Allen radiation belt and continued to operate. Apparently that is a major milestone (my little brain doesn’t understand why that was a tremendous deal to NASA).

Read more…

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31 Jan 2018

Abundance of food today compared with routine scarcity of food earlier than 150 years ago.

Abundance of refrigerated fresh meet at your conveniently available grocery store. Not an option for anyone on the planet 200 years ago, to say nothing of the 10,000 years prior. Photo courtesy of Adobe Stock.

Johan Norberg describes the tremendous progress in the last several hundred years in so many areas, such as life expectancy, health, sanitation, liberty, education, and equality in his book Progress: 10 Reasons to Look Forward to the Future. Here are a few more tidbits I found fascinating.

Consider the scarcity of food in the past and the drop in cost to feed a family in the last 150 years.

Food

Look at just a few of the statistics on availability of food:

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Posted in Change in the past, Economics | Leave a comment
29 Jan 2018
2 Comments

Most of the improvement in life expectancy in the last 10,000 years has taken place in the last 100 years.

Johan Norberg describes the tremendous progress in the last several hundred years in so many areas: life expectancy, health, sanitation, liberty, education, and equality. He discusses these wonderfully delightful trends in his book Progress: 10 Reasons to Look Forward to the Future. I will highlight merely a few of the many things I found fascinating in the book.

Life expectancy

Book provides the following estimates of life expectancy, which I graph above:

Read more…

Posted in Change in the past
22 Jan 2018

Gross World Product over last 27,000 years

Gross World Product, according to Wikipedia is

the combined gross national product of all the countries in the world. Because imports and exports balance exactly when considering the whole world, this also equals the total global gross domestic product (GDP).

I got curious about the world-wide GDP after thinking about two previous posts:

What would happen if you multiplied the drastic increase in  population with the radical increase in per capita income? I made a feeble effort to multiple the two data sets and quickly realized that wouldn’t work. Poked around a bit on the ol’ internet thingie and found the answer at Wikipedia – gross world product is what I was looking for.

27,000 year time horizon – Check out the graph at top of this post for the estimated gross world product on a very long time horizon, specifically from estimates back in 25,000 B.C. through 2014 A.D.

Copyright notice:  Graphs in this post are based on data in an article titled “Gross world product” by Wikipedia, which is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.  As a result the following tables which are derived from this information are licensed for use by anyone under the same CC BY-SA 3.0 license. Any use of these graphs must in turn be distributed under the same license.

I will show the raw data at the end of this post.

With that 27,000 year time horizon, there is a radical turn in the 1900s, at which point the graph appears to goes from horizontal to straight up vertical.

That is too long of a time horizon to understand, so I broke it out into smaller blocks.

Last 2,000 years – To remove the many earlier millenniums of slow growth, time horizon was revised to 1 AD through now. Notice there is still a radical change in the 1900s. With the dramatic changes in the last 200 years, the line from earlier looks like it is flat, but it isn’t.

Read more…

Posted in Change in the past, Economics | Leave a comment
20 Jan 2018

Growth in world population

Our World in Data, the web site of Max Roser, visualizes data in amazing ways. Check out this graph of world population:

“World Population over the last 12,000 years and UN projection until 2100” by Our World in Data is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.  The graphs which follow are derived from this information and are licensed for use by others under the same CC BY-SA 3.0 license.

Very cool. The dramatic expansion in the number of people is amazing.

The graph includes projections through 2100. I pulled out the projections and developed the following graph:

Read more…

Posted in Change in the past, Creative visualizations | Leave a comment
19 Jan 2018
4 Comments

Oil production in North Dakota increases 1.0% in November 2017; getting close to record output

Production of crude oil increased 12,110 bopd in November, or 1.02%, going from 1,182,810 (revised October) to 1,194,920 (preliminary November).

The record high production was 1,227,529 average bopd in December 2014. Production in November 2017 is 32,609 bopd below the high in December 2014. It will only take another 2.7% increase in average production to clear the previous record. I’ll guess that will happen in December 2017 or January 2018, before the winter start to cut into production. (That is not a very bold prediction since Mr. Helms thinks the record production level will easily be surpassed regularly in later 2018.)

Above is a graph of average production in the state since 2004.

Check out the following graph for production from only Bakken formations and total for the state since 2008:

Read more…

Posted in Energy and tagged , ,

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