Covid supply chain disruption

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bob sterman
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Re: Covid supply chain disruption

Post by bob sterman » Mon Apr 20, 2020 7:21 pm

Brightonian wrote:
Mon Apr 20, 2020 6:43 pm
Oil price down to -$37.63 a barrel. No, that "-" isn't a typo.
How long until negative prices filter through the the petrol station forecourts????

I'm looking forward to being able to roll up with boot full of jerry cans have have Tesco pay me to fill them up.

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Gfamily
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Re: Covid supply chain disruption

Post by Gfamily » Mon Apr 20, 2020 7:48 pm

Brightonian wrote:
Mon Apr 20, 2020 6:43 pm
Oil price down to -$37.63 a barrel. No, that "-" isn't a typo.
There was an article in one of the papers of them hiring supertankers to act as offshore storage facilities at a cost of $300K plus per day. Not surprised they'd pay you to take it off their hands.
My avatar was a scientific result that was later found to be 'mistaken' - I rarely claim to be 100% correct
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Pucksoppet
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Re: Covid supply chain disruption

Post by Pucksoppet » Mon Apr 20, 2020 8:32 pm

Gfamily wrote:
Mon Apr 20, 2020 7:48 pm
Brightonian wrote:
Mon Apr 20, 2020 6:43 pm
Oil price down to -$37.63 a barrel. No, that "-" isn't a typo.
There was an article in one of the papers of them hiring supertankers to act as offshore storage facilities at a cost of $300K plus per day. Not surprised they'd pay you to take it off their hands.
Part of it might be an artefact of it being breathtakingly expensive to shut down production, much like blast furnaces. I don't think it is quite as simple as oil gelling/coagulating in pipelines if it isn't kept moving, but some of the processes are continuous flow where there is a minimum required flow for safety purposes. If the producers thought that the situation wasn't temporary, they would run an economic slide rule over the operation and shut down in a heartbeat if continued operation didn't make sense. Restarting might take weeks, if restarting were deemed economic. Now is a good time for out-of date and less-efficient-than new/modern facilities to be shut down permanently.

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Sciolus
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Re: Covid supply chain disruption

Post by Sciolus » Mon Apr 20, 2020 8:53 pm

Unrelated but similar, there was a period* earlier this year when National Grid was paying people to take electricity off its wires because it couldn't dump load or reduce supply fast enough.

*A couple of hours? CBA to dig out references or facts or tedious sh.t like that.

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Pucksoppet
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Re: Covid supply chain disruption

Post by Pucksoppet » Mon Apr 20, 2020 9:50 pm

Sciolus wrote:
Mon Apr 20, 2020 8:53 pm
Unrelated but similar, there was a period* earlier this year when National Grid was paying people to take electricity off its wires because it couldn't dump load or reduce supply fast enough.

*A couple of hours? CBA to dig out references or facts or tedious sh.t like that.
It happens often enough that electrical power goes negative in price:
Clean Energy Wire: 05 Jan 2018 : Sören Amelang Kerstine Appunn :The causes and effects of negative power prices

U.S. Energy Information Administration: February 23, 2012 : Negative prices in wholesale electricity markets indicate supply inflexibilities

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Martin_B
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Re: Covid supply chain disruption

Post by Martin_B » Tue Apr 21, 2020 12:31 am

Pucksoppet wrote:
Mon Apr 20, 2020 8:32 pm
Gfamily wrote:
Mon Apr 20, 2020 7:48 pm
Brightonian wrote:
Mon Apr 20, 2020 6:43 pm
Oil price down to -$37.63 a barrel. No, that "-" isn't a typo.
There was an article in one of the papers of them hiring supertankers to act as offshore storage facilities at a cost of $300K plus per day. Not surprised they'd pay you to take it off their hands.
Part of it might be an artefact of it being breathtakingly expensive to shut down production, much like blast furnaces. I don't think it is quite as simple as oil gelling/coagulating in pipelines if it isn't kept moving, but some of the processes are continuous flow where there is a minimum required flow for safety purposes. If the producers thought that the situation wasn't temporary, they would run an economic slide rule over the operation and shut down in a heartbeat if continued operation didn't make sense. Restarting might take weeks, if restarting were deemed economic. Now is a good time for out-of date and less-efficient-than new/modern facilities to be shut down permanently.
I have worked on more than one facility where this was the case; the wax gelling temperature was above the ambient temperature. One of the sites realised this in design, and included big, over-sized pumps which could apply massive force to the oil in the pipeline, enough to break the gel. Another wasn't so lucky, and basically left a subsea pipeline as a 50 mile-long candle; I think it's still there. (I'm not allowed to tell you which field it is, though!)
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Woodchopper
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Re: Covid supply chain disruption

Post by Woodchopper » Wed Apr 22, 2020 5:44 am

Warning of famine caused by disrupted food supplies
https://www.theguardian.com/global-deve ... SApp_Other

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Ladysavage
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Re: Covid supply chain disruption

Post by Ladysavage » Wed Apr 22, 2020 9:11 am

Martin_B wrote:
Tue Apr 21, 2020 12:31 am
Pucksoppet wrote:
Mon Apr 20, 2020 8:32 pm
Gfamily wrote:
Mon Apr 20, 2020 7:48 pm


There was an article in one of the papers of them hiring supertankers to act as offshore storage facilities at a cost of $300K plus per day. Not surprised they'd pay you to take it off their hands.
Part of it might be an artefact of it being breathtakingly expensive to shut down production, much like blast furnaces. I don't think it is quite as simple as oil gelling/coagulating in pipelines if it isn't kept moving, but some of the processes are continuous flow where there is a minimum required flow for safety purposes. If the producers thought that the situation wasn't temporary, they would run an economic slide rule over the operation and shut down in a heartbeat if continued operation didn't make sense. Restarting might take weeks, if restarting were deemed economic. Now is a good time for out-of date and less-efficient-than new/modern facilities to be shut down permanently.
I have worked on more than one facility where this was the case; the wax gelling temperature was above the ambient temperature. One of the sites realised this in design, and included big, over-sized pumps which could apply massive force to the oil in the pipeline, enough to break the gel. Another wasn't so lucky, and basically left a subsea pipeline as a 50 mile-long candle; I think it's still there. (I'm not allowed to tell you which field it is, though!)
I don't know much about the oil industry but I imagine that an oil refinery operates similarly to our stills and switching the place off safely takes 3-4 days minimum and a restart about the same, plus we end up with inevitable teething troubles coming back online. Far easier to run at a minimum than start/stop

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Woodchopper
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Re: Covid supply chain disruption

Post by Woodchopper » Wed Apr 29, 2020 10:16 am

President Donald Trump signed an executive order Tuesday compelling the nation's meat packing plants, many of which have closed because of COVID-19 outbreaks among workers, to stay open as part of "critical infrastructure" in the United States, administration officials tell ABC News.

The five-page order is two-pronged. A senior administration official said earlier in the day, "from a (Defense Production Act) standpoint, it mandates that critical food supply operations stay open" and second, "from a liability standpoint, we will issue guidance coming from (the Department of Labor) that will provide additional liability protections."

[...]

According to a press release Tuesday from the United Foods and Commercial Workers International Union, at least 20 meatpacking and food processing workers have been confirmed dead and "at least 5,000 meatpacking workers and 1,500 food processing workers have been directly impacted by the virus."
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trump-s ... d=70389089

I suspect that the liability point is that workers will be unable to sue their employers if the workers get infected.

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Re: Covid supply chain disruption

Post by dyqik » Wed Apr 29, 2020 10:21 pm

And unable to claim unemployment if they quit, as it'd be counted as voluntary resignation rather than being dismissed.

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Re: Covid supply chain disruption

Post by Bird on a Fire » Fri May 01, 2020 4:53 pm

f.ck me, it's like they're trying to ensure their entire base gets infected by the time the election comes round. It can't be long before some of the right-wing grifter media starts to read the waters and call the administration out on this sh.t.

I look forward to the "Land of the Free" placard-waving protestors complaining about this infringement of Americans' God-given right of choice.
We have the right to a clean, healthy, sustainable environment.

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Re: Covid supply chain disruption

Post by tom p » Mon May 11, 2020 3:14 pm

JQH wrote:
Sat Mar 28, 2020 2:04 pm
Shortage of condoms with lots of people at home with time on their hands ...

I predict a surge in the birthrate in 2021.

And no doubt in the 2080s younsters will be saying what a selfish lot the covid boomers are.
And Johnson will claim this is the brexit baby boom he predicted because the nation is united in their love of brexit.

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Opti
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Re: Covid supply chain disruption

Post by Opti » Mon May 11, 2020 3:40 pm

I wish this thread didn't always look like 'Cold supply chain disruption' to me. Should *of* gone to Specsavers.
Time for a big fat one.

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