Ventana software support forum

Posted by roy kawe <bykero2001@yahoo.com>
Dear Colleagues

Am a student developing a system dynamics tool for facilitating/
supporting decision making in fuel distribution logistics in
East Africa.

A number of landlocked countries like Uganda, Rwanda, Congo,
Southern Sudan depend on one country (Kenya) for the supply of
fuels.

Since January 2005, in Uganda we've been having fuel shortages
due to several factors like increased demand, problems in
logistics and technical constraints and the implementation of
certain policies, e.t.c.

Am planning to simulate different policy scenarios for supporting
decision making by the stakeholders in order to get the best option
/solution in the current condition of constrained supply.

The stakeholders include the oil companies, The Ministry of Energy,
Revenue collection organizations e.t.c.

I kindly interested in receiving ideas on what variables and
relationships to include in the dynamic model if anyone has ever worked
on similar models.


Kenneth
Posted by roy kawe <bykero2001@yahoo.com>
posting date Fri, 24 Feb 2006 08:28:09 -0800 (PST)

Posted by ""Schade, Wolfgang"" <Wolfgang.Schade@isi.fraunhofer.de>
Dear Kenneth,

I doubt if you are modeling the right problem when you are talking about the CURRENT problem of constrained oil supply. To my understanding it will be a persistent problem, because on the world oil market supply growth can not cope anymore with demand growth due to geological and extraction technological reasons such that the period of oversupply of oil is over.
Instead there will be a more erratic oil market with short periods of high oil prices (>80-100$/bbl) due to undersupply and periods of current oil prices (55-65$/bbl). Look at the discussion on ""Peak oil"" e.g. starting with the Association for the study of Peak Oil (ASPO, http://www.peakoil.net/). Personally, I think that the probability that the current oil shortage is temporary is less than 20%.

For instance the EU is setting up a strategy to use 5,7% of biofuels out of total transport fuel consumption until 2010 and about 20% until 2020. Furthermore, they plan to use hydrogen as fuel (partially produced by fossils, of course) from 2015 onwards while Japan is planning that for 2010.

In my, opinion the African countries should have a high potential to grow also a large quantity of energy plants and produce biofuels. This is something you should model.

I am not so sure about hydrogen, because this requires at the moment still an enormous effort of technological development, which probably will have to happen in EU, US, China and Japan. Nevertheless, there are scenarios where in the long run some African countries might produce hydrogen e.g. from solar energy, wind power, biomass and export it e.g. to the EU.

This comment might be far away from what you were asking,
and I admit that I am not deeply informed about the situation in Africa but I believe you should at least think about the issue of biofuels in Africa because it could also offer some economic potentials for the country side.

Best regards

Wolfgang
Posted by ""Schade, Wolfgang"" <Wolfgang.Schade@isi.fraunhofer.de>
posting date Sat, 25 Feb 2006 15:51:12 +0100

Posted by Bill Harris <bill_harris@facilitatedsystems.com>
>> I doubt if you are modeling the right problem when you are talking
>> about the CURRENT problem of constrained oil supply.

I'm afraid I would agree. I published quite a simple model three years ago (http://www.pegasuscom.com/aar/model5.html) to help people think through whether that sort of claim is reasonable. What surprised me
- From doing the model, as simple as it is, was the speed with which petroleum would seem to go away as a viable fuel. I hadn't really thought about it much, but I figured it would likely go away about as fast as it arrived -- that is, we'd have another 100-150 years to find a replacement. What I hadn't thought about until I saw it in the model was the current high level of usage, which would seem to cause the decline to be much faster than the startup.

There is a potential refining capacity issue, which I didn't include in my model. I think that issue plays out over a much shorter time horizon, and I've read conjectures that oil companies aren't investing more in refining capacity because they realize it will have a short life (can anyone verify that?).


>> For instance the EU is setting up a strategy to use 5,7% of biofuels
>> out of total transport fuel consumption until 2010 and about 20%
>> until 2020. Furthermore, they plan to use hydrogen as fuel (partially
>> produced by fossils, of course) from 2015 onwards while Japan is
>> planning that for 2010.


Even the state in which I live is working to develop a biofuels strategy (http://www.heraldnet.com/stories/06/02/ ... ide001.cfm).
Their focus seems to be turning some of the land that has been farmed into a source of biodiesel.

MfG,

Bill
- --
Bill Harris
Posted by Bill Harris <bill_harris@facilitatedsystems.com>
posting date Sun, 26 Feb 2006 20:19:13 -0800