July 4, Oil Independence Day. Sounds great. What year?
Thanks to my gorgeous friend Shirley
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Even if it takes 10 years to get the oil out, with the futures markets, the prices would drop right away.
B. Dog, thanks for the link to Tapped Out!
For anybody that’s really interested in the topic of energy consumption, I would recommend reading “Beyond Oil and Gas: The Methanol Economy” by nobel prize winner George Olah, and “Consuming Power: A Social History of American Energies” by David Nye.
Olah gives a pretty thorough overview of both conventional and alternative energy sources, including reserves, potential capacities, and economics, before going into a detailed account of his proposed methanol economy.
Nye’s book is kind of a painful read, but I think it makes some valid points about the nature of our energy usage and the mechanics of transitioning between energy sources.
Drill in ANWR.
Jagermeister>> It does no one any good for Greenspan to shoot off his mouth and undermine any and all work that Bernanke is TRYING to accomplish as Fed chairman. Paul Volker didn’t run around blabbering when Greenspan took his chair because he knew better. As for being “lied” to, markets are based a lot on “perception”— you talk a lot about bad news, the markets are going to respond. The rise in oil prices is based on speculation which is based on the safety of supply—-so when one nut case shoots a few oil workers in Africa, the specs go crazy and bid up the price.
The GOP doesn’t want us to know the following:
1) There is no oil shortage
2) There is no natural gas shortage
3) There is no coal shortage
Essentially their economic plan is to let the market dictate to us all how much we should pay for energy, based on squeezing the public to the brink of poverty, as long as the stockholders are happy.
Face it, folks, the population on Earth is growing like bateria in a Petri dish and we’re running out of agar.
Google “alyeska pipeline throughput” — the 2007 Prudhoe Bay throughput is only 36% of its peak in 1988. We could fill it up with ANWR juice, but even that is just a temporary stop-gap measure.
When the Seabrook NH nuclear power plant was being constructed, the initial cost estimate was $1 billion and the final cost topped $6.5 billion. Before construction, protesters argued you could spend a whole lot less than $1 billion on energy conservation measures and *save* more energy than the power plant could ever produce; the return on investment is excellent, and you’d also put a lot of people to work. Well, that didn’t happen, and now the utility rates are sky high. Conservation, unpopular as it may be, is the long-term answer to our oil dependency troubles.
P.S. Does Newt really believe the Texas A&M professor who says he can turn garbage into gasoline for $2.00 per gallon? Hee-haw!
Another glaring inaccuracy besides there is no oil shortage is there IS a shortage on refineries.
We do not have enough, because:
A. The oil companies will make less if they invest in refineries over the short term
B. People don’t want them in their backyards.
There is plenty of oil. Just not enough places to refine them to take the burden off the gas station owners that pay more than 40k to fill an underground tank at the pump.
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Perhaps we need government “interference” in the market by requiring that a randomly-chosen 50% of oil futures buyers to accept delivery on property they own, like: “you gotta tank, Mister, or should we just pump this crude into your swimming pool?”
This ‘debate’ is a lot of sound and fury, signifying nothing. I mean, how stupid are we?
Anyone who believes Bush and Cheney aren’t going to do this little favor (Drill Here, Drill Now, Pay More!) for themselves and their friends and backers before the end of their term of office, please send me a hundred dollars in cash, for no reason at all.
Our dependence on fossil fuels is the root problem. Exploiting our resources to obtain more will just prolong our dependency. I believe that everyone is now trying to shed themselves from the shackles by cutting back their personal usage and buying more efficient transportation. They are not doing this out of some global philosophy but because it is the most expedient solution to an immediate problem. But like true junkies acceptance of current situations will allow them to justify ever higher gas prices as long as they have the means to buy. And like true junkies will only seek to be ‘clean’ when a) forced to by intervention or b) cannot afford a fix by any means (borrowing, stealing, prostituting). Both of these lead to back sliding and I’m sure the recidivate rate is quite high because of the long term history of usage. “Just Say No to Oil” is a lame sentiment but it must be done to kick the Greasy Monkey.
#39
Where do people get this crap? THERE IS NOT A SHORTAGE OF REFINERIES!!!! If there was, they would be building them.
Many refineries especially around the gulf coast are running at BELOW capacity due to declining supplies of oil coming from Mexico and Venezuela, both of which are in post peak declines. The US has been post peak oil since 1972, hence the reason refineries have not been built here in decades.
What there might be a shortage of is refineries that can handle the crappy “tar sand” oil coming from Canada, but all that requires is retrofitting old refineries.
#44 “What there might be a shortage of is refineries that can handle the crappy “tar sand” oil coming from Canada, but all that requires is retrofitting old refineries.”
Not so fast. Your last congressional energy bill may screw that plan, and it’s an election year. As usual, don’t hold your breath.
http://tinyurl.com/4xw798
Heard on the news that the Obama campaign is against importing oil sands crude since the carbon footprint is too high. That’s over a million barrels per day that we can sell to China. 😉
You know if we would just convert to alternative energy we could save hundreds of billions, even trillions. We wouldn’t need a Soviet-sized army to protect saudi arabia and we wouldn’t have to maintain a floating armada to retake oil resources lost to turbulent governments overseas.
The only problem I foresee is convincing private industry because their business model is based on artificially creating shortages to keep prices high.
its hard to convince people there’s a sunlight or wind shortage.