Peter Sterling

Barron's Banks on $100 Oil

China is expected to have 140 million automobiles plying its roads by 2020, seven times more than now, fueling demand for transportation infrastructure and services. If you think oil is going to go down in price with all this demand increase, think again.

Here is how America can fix itself up:

www.strategicnine.com/...

The "America First" Energy Plan for safe, secure domestic supplies of Transportation energy.
AMERICAN ENERGY FOR AMERICAN'S: BASIC ELEMENTS FOR AN ACTION PLAN
Proposed Presidential Executive Orders:
Declare an energy emergency and set aside the OCS and ANWR moratoriums and some permitting requirements so as to fast-track various critical new energy developments.
Declaration granting a tax holiday for declared special "American Energy Economic Zones" (AEEZ), see below.
Declaration temporarily eliminating up front oil and gas lease payments, royalties and other imposts, as well as regulatory delays.
Declaration making available $200 billion p.a. in low-cost construction financing guarantees and other incentives for new energy projects in AEEZ areas.
Proposed Government Actions;
1) Cancel the Moratorium on drilling on the US Continental Shelf today.
2) Cancel the Moratorium on drilling on the Artic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) 1002 area today.
3) Support the three international waters resources rights Claims made by American Companies to contiguous oil and gas reserves that could be developed without any regulatory lags. (See; strategicnine.com and unoilgas.com ).
4) Put aside most of the timeline and permitting requirements for urgent, identified critical energy projects as listed here in declared "American Energy Economic Zones" (AEEZ) “in the national interest” by creating a fast-track office to evaluate and approve requested leases within 90 days.
5) Allow unsolicited OCS Lease Applications anywhere immediately, grant them on a first-in first granted basis.
6) Enlarge new OCS post-moratorium lease block sizes from the paltry 5 mile by 5 mile area to a more realistic size of perhaps 100 miles by 100 miles in frontier regions.
7) Provide a ten year tax and impost holiday on strategic new oil and gas development projects in AEEZ areas. Offer matching funds for seismic and EM surveys to be repaid from eventual production to get oil flowing sooner.
8) Provide low-cost loan guarantees for development of urgently required new oil and gas project infrastructure in AEEZ areas.
9) Provide low-cost Government guarantees or loans for offshore oil and gas ships and vessels built to work in the US AEEZ areas for the next 5 years.
10) Temporarily exempt approved oil and gas projects within the AEEZ areas from the US Cabotage laws so that projects can more quickly secure production equipment from overseas shipyards.
11) Set Aside Regulatory Delays for projects within the AEEZ areas. Make regulatory bodies set up departments to “fast-track” approval of energy projects to clear hurdles within 3-6 months.
12) Eliminate Frivolous and Mendacious Lawsuit Delays for projects in AEEZ areas: Create a special court to hear energy related cases with a mandate to adjudicate cases within 7 days. Example: the lawsuits currently stopping Shell from drilling off Alaska, partly on the basis that their ships might bump into whales; if applied to the rest of the world’s oceans would cease all shipping and world trade!
13) Provide 250,000 new grants for students to pay for college for future petroleum engineers and geologists, and for technical petroleum production job training programs.
14) Eliminate any royalties, taxes and permitting costs on critical new energy projects in AEEZ areas for ten years, to enable energy companies to spend every dollar of risk capital they have on US drilling, building production equipment, and related expenses, as only holes in the ground will solve the energy problem.
15) For transport; Provide tax and other incentives to build distribution infrastructure and car-truck conversion stations to switch 25% of the US vehicular fleet to compressed natural gas within 10 years. This will lower demand for oil and lower CO2 emissions, and would require approximately 5 Trillion cubic feet (Tcf) per annum of gas.