The Answer to Energy Independence 15 comments
August 04, 2008
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Is the answer to our energy problem?
a) Drill, Drill, Drill: off-shore, ANWAR
b) Renewables: wind, solar, bio-fuels, etc.
c) Conservation: car pool, public transportation, etc.
d) All of the above
As soon as a politicians realize that the answer is all of the above, the sooner we will get out of this mess.
T. Boone Pickens is creating great dialog with his plan. It is the best one I have heard yet…..
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This article has 15 comments:
My problem is with the Al Gore types who get $100,000 for a 1 hr presentation to tell you the obvious (climate change is happening). At the end of the day Al Gore has done absolutely nothing to remedy the problem. It reminds of the old joke of a consultant taking your watch and telling you want time it is.
T. Boone Pickens has put out commercials which he paid for out of his own pocket and is the first major player to have started on an alternative energy path for America.
In regards to your suggestions,
a) It is a short term solution. There is only 4 yrs of oil at most in ANWR and the US Coastal waters combined.
b) & c) Definitely long term solutions and the way to go for sure
I will watch it closely for the next buying opportunity.
My reserve numbers come from G.W. himself.
In recent speeches, I remember he saying about 18 billion barrels are in place for each site. You can automatically assume he took the best numbers (Proven + Probable + Possible).
36 billion/ 22 mbl per day ==> 4.4 years
My philosphy is: Drain ME reserves now, develop alternative energy now and save ANWR + US Coastal oil for future petrochemical use.
I agree with you fully, there is no magic bullet and the energy challenge needs to be attacked from many different angles.
Probably the most important thing we can do to conserve is to obey speed limits, and avoid "jackrabbit" starts and stops. If we were to enforce the posted speed limits on all highways, we likely could drop the price of gas/diesel by at least $.50/gallon.
Long ago (well over 27 years ago actually), a friend of mine left the midwest to "make his fortune" in the west Texas oil biz, he wanted to start as a roughneck and "work his way up"... he was also convinced then we could "drill our way out of the oil crisis... (unfortunately perhaps for him, as it turned out he didn't last long as a roughneck).
I remember at the time, wishing him luck of course, but advising him of several facts...
If oil is finite (an obvious truth) one day it would no longer be an "energy source"... but would take more energy and resources to get than it would be worth to burn, and oil wells would exist as a raw feedstock mineral (material) mining, instead of energy mining... and may not be exactly a growing career... of course the world Peak took longer to reach than I thought at the time...
If oil is infinite, and the USA, which had hosted more oil wells than the rest of the world all put together, had been so thoroughly drilled, basically a giant pincushion full of pins... and yet oil production in the USA had already peaked, maybe it would be a smart thing to stop, and please, rethink the policy of "Drain America First", which was the basis of all prior policy... and better perhaps to sign long term supply agreements with OPEC countries at fair prices for them, so as to preserve as long as possible domestic reserves...
And, as a last thought, while still wishing him well in his personal endeavour, I asked him to please ask every smart guy he met to please clue him in on the reality of oil extraction and reserves. It was maddening back then without free internet info to get enough Annual Reports each year to read about oil reserves...
Several years later, he introduced me to a multi-well owner, who, when hearing my thoughts on oil, said that the realities for him were, he had to exploit wells in a way that was short term oriented, but long term stupid, because of interest rate (cost of capital) pressures, and banker partners demands for quick ROI. He capped many productive wells after they were allowed to flow at too high a rate, because of his partners pressure to produce... and the depletion rate just fell off a cliff on too many. Interest Rates (capital cost) were higher back then, but the reality was that it largely decided well management... I'm sure it still applies today, even if to a slightly lesser degree.
Oil prices were much lower then, but the dynamic still exists. Drilling to get "today's profit" often limits total resource recovery.
Banker driven oil exploitation decisions need to be completely re-examined. It was obvious to me long ago...
Oil was priced as if it had no intrinsic value... bankers decided to price and figure as if it was infinite supply, priced at the marginal barrel... hell, even the term "Production" galled me no end... I was in Manufacturing Industries, I knew what "Production" was, oil wasn't production, it was extraction! You couldn't just "produce" oil... You found it, extracted it, refiined it, burned it... and then it was gone. I could recycle the steel in a car and "produce" another one...
Pricing it as though it was just "wellhead cost plus" was nonsense, and while the world accepted this nonsense, the smart thing to do was to buy it on the cheap from OPEC as much as possible.
If we don't recognize the wasteful practices that got us into this mess in the first place, we are doomed to a worse nightmare than can be described here if we just cut the bankers loose... and if you do not believe that bankers run the oil business, I suggest you do some research. Read between the lines on any Oil company Annual report, and you'll see how quarterly profit rules. Why do you think Shell allowed itself to be so lax in reporting reserves?
To squander the slim balance of US reserves in a mad rush to drill for a quick buck while leaving the country deep in debt in the meanwhile, is not only foolhardy, but is a travesty of inter-generational theft.
You'll find the appropriate audience will be back in session in about 6 weeks. They couldn't see any cause for alarm.
At that point they'll all be back trying to add on a bridge, a museum, or a study on frogs, or a new highway next to their nephews farm, in their home district all to your "All of the above" and they won't stop "Yapping" till they get "The important stuff" so for the rest of 08 buy a bike.
And if you meet an Oil lobbyist--that's right!!---under the bus. There's still room for a few more.
I was wondering if this republican politically driven mantra about drill drill were to come about, where would the new oil production be sold? Would it be available to the world markets and if marketed there perhaps have less effect on the U.S. market prices of oil? In any case the long term availability of new hydrocarbon sources that might make a price difference will take a lot of time and in the meantime let's convert now to wind, solar, wave and as many other economic forms of energy generation as possible. With the coming historical world wide economic slowdown and the likely bankruptcy of big car makers, the reduced demand will work to demand side benefits and maybe allow some time to convert - if we will do it. But converting from one religion to another, even under duress, might be really hard - particularly in the absence of leadership..
What is more liable to reduce green house gases and air pollution, a big hop in the numbers of nuclear plants or the continued use of more and more coal and more and more oil?
And if the U.S. can reduce the price of gasoline through more production and more of it is thereby consumed, what is the point? Don't we want to get off the oil jag and achieve what the DOE has, for 20 years, laughingly called energy independence?
Appreciated reading poster objectivity's comments. A perspective I had not known about.
I was wondering if this republican politically driven mantra about drill drill were to come about, where would the new oil production be sold? Would it be available to the world markets and if marketed there perhaps have less effect on the U.S. market prices of oil? In any case the long term availability of new hydrocarbon sources that might make a price difference will take a lot of time and in the meantime let's convert now to wind, solar, wave and as many other economic forms of energy generation as possible. With the coming historical world wide economic slowdown and the likely bankruptcy of big car makers, the reduced demand will work to demand side benefits and maybe allow some time to convert - if we will do it. But converting from one religion to another, even under duress, might be really hard - particularly in the absence of leadership..
What is more liable to reduce green house gases and air pollution, a big hop in the numbers of nuclear plants or the continued use of more and more coal and more and more oil?
And if the U.S. can reduce the price of gasoline through more production and more of it is thereby consumed, what is the point? Don't we want to get off the oil jag and achieve what the DOE has, for 20 years, laughingly called energy independence?
Appreciated reading poster objectivity's comments. A perspective I had not known about.
IE. the power lines to connect his wind farm to the electrical grid. He wants us to pay for them and then to pay for the electricity generated. $10 Million for ads is miniscule compared to the benefits he will reap if successful.
Yes, T. Boone Pickens does have an ulterior motive: To get funding for having his wind farm connected to the power grid.
But how would you prefer your tax dollars are spent ?
1) Creating new jobs in the US and shifting electric power generation to renewable power sources.
or
2) Using the US military forces to guard oil tankers from hostile countries in the Middle East. It has been estimated that if you factored in the actual cost of the protection the US provides to the Arab gulf states, that gasoline should actually cost $8 / gallon not $4 /gallon.